


The Bird and the Cage

by woodironbone



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Banter, Clothed Sex, Codependency, Compromise, Domestic, Drinking, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Everyone Has Issues, F/F, Fun With Grammar, Intrigue, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Morse Code, Multiple Selves, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, Physics, Post-Canon, Present Tense, Romantic Angst, Self-Hatred, Self-cest, Sexual Tension, Smoking, Time Shenanigans, Yuletide, Yuletide 2017, just... so much banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 23:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13041423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodironbone/pseuds/woodironbone
Summary: Rosalind and Robert are outside a house on the coast in the middle of nowhere. They don't remember why, or when, or how they arrived. They don't remember a lot of things. Rosalind works to illuminate the path that led them here, while Robert finds himself settling in. For the first time, they must contend with being truly at odds. And as the explanation unravels, they must contend with a lot more than that.





	1. introduction & arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gayporwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayporwave/gifts).



> I have no idea how this got so long - I mean it's probably related to how I liked all three of your prompts so much I ended up combining them into a big wild mobius strip, but... I was only about a third of the way in when I realized it was completely out of control. so pLEASE ENJOY THIS SMALL NOVELLA!! in which I dick around with metaphysics and play real fast and loose with how the Luteces even work. I really hope you enjoy it, and that you have a lovely holiday. Happy Yuletide!
> 
>  **Content Warnings:**  
>  \--Throughout: nosebleeds (non-graphic)  
> \--Ch. 3: brief depiction of a seizure  
> \--Ch. 4: brief discussion of the atrocities at Wounded Knee (non-graphic)  
> \--Ch. 5: some PTSD/panic symptoms

“ _Our current state of being—or lack thereof—has left my brother… unfulfilled. The biological urge to leave one’s mark is strong; and it is not an impossibility. We could instantiate ourselves back in Columbia. Return to an old life for the possibility of creating new. But… we died in that world. Returning would mean giving up part of us. Ourselves. We’d become flesh, and all that it is heir to. The mysteries of the universe would become, once again, mysteries.”_

 

For a time it would be difficult to piece the matter together. They knew this going in, but nevertheless they were—they _are_ determined to see it through. They will be together, just as they always have been and always are. That much is—was— _was to become_ certain.

Will _always_ be certain.

The emphasis is critical. The tenses, however, won’t do. It seems we’ve gone ahead and made a mess of this already. Very well; we’ll begin again.

 

Lutece has never lent themself well to narrative. There is an insensibility to them, not just the difficulty of grammar or the precarious intersections of probability and practicality, but a generalized confusion. It isn’t so much that there are two of them, as entangled and superimposed as the particles that led them to one another; it’s much more this whole business of their being temporally unglued, clinically undead, existentially unmoored. Scattered in the possibility space, as Rosalind once put it. Which is to say the two of them, entangled as they are, occupy an infinitude of _possible spaces_ ; or to put it another way, they are superpositioned all over kingdom come. To try and sort it all out, pin it all down, would be folly on multiple fronts: linguistic, academic, pragmatic. A philosopher’s nightmare, a mathematician’s undoing. No small challenge, then, for the simple author. But even when faced with poor odds, there is little sense in not trying.

So: imagine infinity as a grid on which the Luteces exist everywhere and nowhere all at once. From all points extend a certain furrow of their story, each connecting and re-connecting along the innumerable paths of…. This metaphor doesn’t work. A grid is far too rigid a concept, and a furrow is just a _line_ , which implies a start and an end, neither of which applies. Time is an ocean, not a river.

Imagine infinity as a circle. In an infinite circle, every possible point is the center; and so it is for Lutece, existing centrally everywhere at once. Better, as metaphors go, but the comparison is far too abstract. And really, a geometric center has got nothing to do with it.

The trouble here is in the phrase ‘imagine infinity.’ Entreating the reader to imagine a thing that cannot, by its very nature, be conceived, seems at best foolhardy, at worst cruel. Let’s move away from that.

The _point_ , if there is one, a singular point on which we shall pivot, is to say it would be impossible to describe precisely when any of this began, or, more rightly, whether it _began_ at all. Where the Luteces are concerned, things have a way of _always having been_ , springing into place. But as literary convention still demands that we experience time in a linear fashion, a compromise must be reached.

Which is to say: one must start somewhere.

 

There was—will be—there _is_ a moment marked by profound silence. A silence becomes _profound_ when it somehow exceeds a given set of expectations. In this case, the silence accomplishes this by being utterly unwitnessed. It is the silence of a space uninhabited.

Imagine a space that is uninhabited. To simplify: imagine a box that is sealed. You cannot see inside the box. You have never seen inside the box. All boxes have insides, you know that much to be true, but beyond that you have nothing to go on. Inside there may be nothing. Inside there may be a cat. (The possibility-cat, in turn, is equally likely to be alive or dead, and it is important to remember that as long we cannot be sure, _both_ states will remain indefinitely, functionally true. However this detail is tangential to the present exercise.)

By similar notion: in this space marked by profound silence, unseen and unconfirmed, there may be no one. Or, there may be two people, two smartly dressed, nearly identical gingers, who will disrupt this profound silence without even pausing to register it in the first place, speaking as though mid-conversation, which is in fact the only sort of conversation they have.

This is how the Luteces always exist: _maybe_ , and _in media res_.

“Well,” Robert might say. “I suppose that’s the end of it.”

“You _suppose_ that’s the end of _what_ ,” Rosalind would reply, with almost certain disapproval.

Actually, the conditional is no way to tell a story. We shall move forward on the assumption that this _is_ happening, and that they _are_ , not maybe, here.

So: Robert tilts his head, a mild imitation of his counterpart’s more birdlike gestures. “The entire thought experiment,” he echoes.

Rosalind tuts. “Don’t be silly.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You are.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

“Are you _trying_ to be childish?”

“I’m trying to understand what it is we’re _supposing_.” Rosalind wrinkles her nose with distinct displeasure. “Not that I approve of supposition.”

“I suppose you’d prefer a declarative statement.”

She huffs. “Only if it can be backed up by credible evidence.”

“You’re impossible to please.”

“It was _you_ who set down the ultimatum.”

“And now its terms are satisfied,” says Robert. “Comstock doesn’t exist, has never existed, will never exist. The task is finished.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it full well.” Rosalind fixes her hands together, one thumb smoothing across her knuckles. A repetitive, predictable, perhaps comforting motion. “The girl has already complicated matters beyond even her reach.”

“Mistakes were made,” he concedes.

“ _Are_ being made,” she corrects.

“Will have been made,” he amends, and then he sighs, as heavily as might an emotionally overburdened Romantic poet. “But they are hers to fix. It’ll all wash out in the end.”

“Will it,” says Rosalind, crisp and unimpressed. “Like the sins of a man in a river.”

(It should be noted here that while neither of them are presently looking at each other, nothing else around them has currently caught their attention. They gaze, individually, indistinctly, into the middle distance without registering its contents, as one does in a daydream.)

“We’ve gotten away from my original point,” says Robert in only the faintest of sulks.

“I had rather thought we were getting around to it.”

“Hmm,” says Robert, unconvinced. He holds for a beat; then a beat longer. Which is to say: a beat is _missed_.

Rosalind isn’t expecting that, which is strange in and of itself; consequently she misses _her_ beat, which is far stranger. In the span of a breath they are displaced from the usual rhythm of their conversation, and only now, given this rare moment of un-preoccupation, do they take stock of their surroundings.

The reason it took so long for this to occur is their surroundings are ordinarily of no concern. Ever since their not-quite-death, their position in space has been a mere technicality, a necessary ingredient, or perhaps side effect, of _being_. When one exists in possibility space, location is not so much an active component of existence as it is an afterthought. After all, as it has been stated, they are where they’re needed and needed where they are; to _be_ somewhere is to belong to the moment that encompasses it. The somewhere itself does not interest them in the same way one never considers the exact time until a situation demands it.

Now, for the first time in their post-linear existence, a situation demands their locational awareness, and it is a resoundingly peculiar experience.

Several things become clear at once: first and most immediately apparent, that this is neither Columbia, nor the miserable office of Booker DeWitt, nor New York City, nor Rapture, nor Paris, nor anywhere else they have variously been, and this simply does not _follow_. There is no point in their entanglement that does not fit into an understood schematic. A place they know, have known, will know; traditionally, a place in which there is _work_ to be done. This place is foreign. It is _new_ , and not in the sense of a future tense, of an experience that has not happened _yet_ —there is no _yet_ in the Lutece equation, there is only _now_ , and all other grammatical confusion is linguistic in nature. It is not just the newness of this location that puzzles the Luteces to silence; it is the linearity of that newness, that previously they were in an existence of all-at-once, and now, now there is only _here_.

The disorientation of this development cannot be overstated.

Secondarily but no less apparent: they stand on a narrow dirt path that wends through a field, an open sprawl of land which meets empty horizon in three cardinal directions—north, south, and west, while east, signified by the rising sun, features a horizon met by ocean, the shore of which can be reached by a small, steep path running over the lip of a short rocky incline. Immediately before them stands a house, rather like the one they once called home on Columbia. It appears to be livable, perhaps even lived-in, but there is no signage, no post box, no house number, even; and no visible civilization in any direction.

Third: Robert has begun to bleed.

Rosalind springs to action at once, drawing her handkerchief sharply from her interior pocket and holding it to his nose. His hand meets hers quickly, taking over the task of applying pressure. For a terrible moment they simply stare at each other, saying nothing, _saying nothing_. Not knowing what to say.

The Luteces are alone, which is not the worst of it. They are frequently alone, whether by ignoring all around them in favor of conversing together like a pair of thieves, or in the sense that one is always alone with one’s thoughts. But physically alone, alone by absence of other people; this, too, does not follow. There is no necessity here, no one who needs them to explain the ins and outs of causality, no objects or subjects that require their attention. The silence that has taken them is also profound, though not in the same way as before; this time it is profound because it is unfamiliar, heavy with improbability. For the Luteces, silence is like nonbeing. If they are not _speaking_ , if they are not fulfilling some ordained purpose of self-sustaining causal loops, then what right have they to exist at all?

There is an insensibility to their life-after-life, yes, but there are also _rules_.

Their mutually bewildered stillness is replaced suddenly and swiftly by action; his right hand still holding the handkerchief in place, Robert struggles awkwardly with his left to seize his own handkerchief from _his_ interior pocket. The time it takes for Rosalind to understand the reason for his sudden urgency is unconscionable; she is not _slow_ , neither of them are _slow_ , neither of them have suffered the average response time of mortals since their alteration, and yet it isn’t until Robert has fished his handkerchief out and is reaching toward her with it that she thinks to raise her own fingers, trembling ever-so-slightly, to her upper lip.

She stares at the blood on her fingertips for longer than she ought to. She takes the handkerchief with the same hand, smearing the blood into the fabric before she even presses it to her nose.

They stare at each other. They are bleeding. They say nothing.

There is a question which must be asked. They each know it, resting as it does on the respective tips of their tongues, but neither gives it voice for an increasingly unorthodox span of time. To ask a non-rhetorical question is to admit not knowing the answer. While they have never had every available answer at their personal beck and call, there are _some_ questions they have simply never had to ask. To break that tradition is a daunting prospect.

It is Robert who gives way first. “Where are we?” finally blurts out of him, sounding unsuitable in his voice, tasting unnatural in his mouth.

“I know not,” Rosalind answers quickly, tersely; eager to have the comforting rhythm of their discussion back, if nothing else. She pulls the handkerchief from her face, staring accusingly at the stain on it.

The question gives way to others, as most questions do: “How did we _get_ here?” Robert takes a faltering step forward and immediately thinks better of it, shifting his weight back on his heels. “Why don’t we remember? Why are we _bleeding_?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” says Rosalind, the emphatic tone betraying an uncharacteristic distress. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Something must have happened.”

“Assuredly.” It is as vague an explanation as they have ever entertained, but it will do in the absence of empirical certitude, and Rosalind grasps onto it like a lifeline. As much as she scorns guessing, guessing is a step closer to hypothesis, and thus to _theories_ and _revelations_ and finally, understanding. Each step in that direction is a step _away_ from the horror of being metaphorically lost at sea. The vague assertion of _something having happened_ must lead them somewhere, one way or another.

It does seem to be taking a frightfully long time, however. They continue to stand there, hemorrhaging, moated by the strangeness of it all, and the longer they wait the less likely it becomes that anything will clarify itself without a nudge.

Rosalind has little patience for this state of affairs, the two of them gawking about like nervous schoolchildren with bloodied noses. They are a pair of equally brilliant minds. Nothing can remain shadowed from their mutual perspicacity forever. She wipes at her nose irritably and balls up Robert’s handkerchief in her fist, reasserting her composure with a sharp straightening of her shoulders.

 _Walking_ is a rather quaint concept for them, exercised only when endeavoring to blend in, but as there currently seems to be no alternative, she walks; to the east, specifically, stopping at the edge of the rocky slope to survey the shoreline. There is not much of it, most of the coast being steep cliffside, but down the little path, where sand meets sea, there lies a jut of half-collapsed dock. Tethered to this, a partially submerged rowboat.

She clicks her tongue impatiently. The boat is not seaworthy. There is no lighthouse, no waypoint. This is no appreciable exit. She turns around and marches back to her brother, who continues to hold her handkerchief to his nose.

“Still bleeding?” she says, checking on herself—the flow was quelled rather quickly for her, but for Robert it continues.

“I always did excel at it,” he mutters.

“Come on, then,” she says, taking a decisive step toward the only beacon they have, the house. “We’ve got to start somewhere.”

“Haven’t had to do _that_ in a while,” he says wryly.

 

An Itemized Account of Objects, Furnishings, & Amenities Discovered Within the House

preliminary findings—

  * 3 primary exits (front, back, cellar)
  * running water, working electricity & gas—all evidently self-sustaining, more investigation required
  * 1-2 window arrangements per room, each with matching curtain sets
  * 12 lamps of various designs and sizes scattered throughout
  * a curious absence of clocks



upper floor—

  * 2 identical bedrooms each containing 1 sizable bed, 1 dresser (including clothing in correct styles and sizes), 1 closet (more of the same), 1 fully supplied desk, 1 chair, 1 bookshelf with duplicate sets of books
  * washroom: bathtub, shower, sink, toilet, all amenities accounted for including towels, soaps, first aid supplies, &c.
  * study: 2 partnered desks (fully supplied), 2 chairs, assorted technologies required for data recording, 4 filing cabinets (containing what appears to be every bit of scientific writing either of us has ever put down)



ground floor—

  * foyer: 1 doormat, 1 coat closet (2 winter coats, 2 raincoats), 4 points of egress (front door, staircase to second floor, entrances to sitting room, dining room)
  * sitting room: 1 rug, 1 window seat, 1 sofa, 2 arm chairs, 2 end tables, 1 grand piano, 1 phonograph with diverse record collection, 1 fully stocked liquor cabinet (wine, brandy, gin), fireplace with all necessities, 2 points of egress (to foyer, library)
  * library: too many books to account for, 1 desk (empty), 1 chair, 1 telegraph machine (appears to be in working order), 2 point of egress (to sitting room, dining room)
  * dining room: 1 table, 2 chairs, 1 cabinet (full set of dishes, glassware, flatware, candles, matches), 4 points of egress (to foyer, library, kitchen, washroom)
  * washroom: same as upper floor minus shower/bath
  * kitchen: fully stocked cabinets, working icebox, stove, kettle, tea set, cleaning supplies, food and necessary accoutrements (too else much to list), 1 small table, 2 chairs, 3 points of egress (dining room, back door, cellar door)
  * cellar: far larger than the house’s foundation would indicate; includes sizable food store and other supplies, electric washing machine and hand-crank dryer, and a perfect replication of our Columbia laboratory, including a well-supplied workshop, all our former technologies and amenities, and, apparently functional and in its entirety, the Contraption



 

“This is quite impossible,” says Robert after they have completed the inventory. They are both now standing in the cellar at the base of their looming invention. He has finally stopped bleeding, though he continues to fidget with the soiled handkerchief.

“I am quite aware,” says Rosalind, her attention still fixed on the notepad and her tidily arranged list.

He hums his dissatisfaction, looking about the workshop, then looking up at their intact, dormant machine. “Well, I suppose it’s only highly improbable.”

“Given that it is, by all accounts, _happening_ , I’m inclined to agree.”

“Any theories?” he says, taking a few ponderous steps forward, beginning a cautious circuit round the Contraption.

“A few,” she says, lowering the notepad and folding both hands over it as she watches her brother. “All of them distressingly speculative at present.”

“Hmm.”

“We ought to get a sense of the facts,” she says firmly. “We have no knowledge of this place, nor any memory of our arrival—method, cause, or otherwise. Yet we are _here_ , and this place is very plainly intended for the two of us.”

“Hmm.”

“One could even go so far as to posit that it was _arranged_ by us,” she supposes. She gazes up at the room’s centerpiece. She sets notepad and pen aside, suddenly wishing her hands free, though she has no immediate use for them. “The presence of _this_ certainly lends credence to that theory.”

“If we take that as a working assumption,” says Robert, “then it follows that we brought ourselves here, and furthermore, that it was not by accident.”

“Hmm.”

“We might also assume that we knew this memory lapse would occur,” he says, pivoting slow on his heel to face her again. “And if that’s the case—”

“—we’d have left ourselves instructions,” Rosalind finishes.

Robert considers the idea, his brow furrowed. “No voxophones.”

“Nor notes left in obvious places.” Rosalind looks about the cellar in vain hope of undiscovered clues. They had been very thorough, especially in the cellar. If their current set of assumptions proves to hold water, any potential instructions would have to be either something very obvious or something they are capable of discovering through combined wits. That doesn’t exactly narrow it down, but…

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Robert asks.

The question momentarily pulls her up short. It’s been a good while, relatively speaking, since she had to consider the linear efficacy of her memory. “The last?”

“Most recent.”

“You mean from our perspective.” It’s difficult, uncomfortably so, to call anything up. It’s all murky, jumbled, as though she is seeing it all at once, self-devouring and repeating, like any ordinary person might perceive the lives they used to lead.

All terribly troubling. The implications of their shared bleeding and memory lapse are not hidden from her, and if she can see them so can Robert. They are both, it seems, willing to ignore that spectral elephant in the room. At the very least they seem to have come through it all right, though Robert is a shade paler than usual, and at times his step is a little unsteady. He tries to hide this from Rosalind, the first he’s needed to do so in a very long proverbial time. She elects not to mention it. They will have to address these matters soon enough. Far simpler, for now, to settle on the answer to Robert’s question.

“Well,” she says, “we were discussing the end of—”

“That was when we arrived.”

“Are you _sure_ that’s right?”

“No.” He frowns. “We need a frame of reference.”

“Agreed. Most recent as compared to…”

“This is hopelessly imprecise.”

“Reference must be _external_ ,” she says. “We’ve nothing to compare to here, yet we seem to be fixed in place. We need some means of outside communication.”

“There’s the telegraph,” says Robert dubiously, “though I don’t know who we’d—”

He stops short, and what’s come to him comes to her as well. It comes in fits and starts, bits and pieces, but the memory _does_ come, and that is what counts. When Rosalind looks up she sees Robert meeting her eyes with sparkling excitement.

“Your idea for the—”

“Inter-universe communication.” She nods. “Sending signals through the possibility space via—”

“—entangled particles within a scaled down—” He snaps his fingers.

She paces. “It was just an _idea_.”

“You described the schematic for it.”

“But I never _developed_ it,” says Rosalind. The idea came after their undeath, and she didn’t spend any of that parceled out time developing anything. They had rather moved beyond that.

Robert dismisses her quibble with a wave of his hand, already moving past her to the cellar stairs, and she turns to follow. She notes his quickened steps, and takes care to match pace. She does not share his enthusiasm, just as he apparently does not share her overall discomfort. Another matter to be dealt with later. _Later, later, later_. Funny how all these foreign concepts come rushing back, slotting so easily into place, just as though they never left. Funny, or awful.

In a few moments they are in the library, standing over the telegraph, which sits unassumingly on its little desk.

“I hadn’t noticed any modifications,” says Robert, bending down to take a closer look.

“I would have made them subtle.” Rosalind studies the machine at a thoughtful distance. It had never occurred to her to look closely before. Why would it? She remembers her concept, discussing the particulars with Robert, even pondering a design, but not _building_ it. It had been little more than a thought exercise. She’d certainly had no intentions of sitting down to draw up a blueprint. How very unnerving, to discover one’s own advancements without any recollection of having made them.

“Ah—here we are.” Robert shifts his position to get a better look: sure enough, nestled in amidst armature and electromagnet is a miniaturized variation on their technology, the very same that allowed them to find each other in the first place. Difficult to notice by design.

“Elegantly done,” says Robert.

“Hm.” Rosalind regards the thing rather distrustfully.

Robert pulls out the chair and takes a seat, checking that everything is in place before he switches the circuit on. He hesitates for just a moment before reaching for the knob; Rosalind doesn’t hesitate at all when she reaches out and places her hand on his, stopping him.

“Who is it you suppose is waiting on the other side?” she says.

“I suspect we shan’t know until I’ve made contact,” says Robert, sounding a trifle churlish.

“And you’d take that step blind, would you?”

“Is there another option?”

“I would expect you to ask that _before_ you rush to alert anyone to our presence.” Rosalind holds his gaze steadily for a moment, and for a moment he holds it back. Then his eyes flick down and he withdraws his hand.

“You’ve grown cautious,” he says.

“ _You’ve_ grown overeager,” she counters.

“We arrived at the same hypothesis,” he says, twisting in the chair to better look up at her. “The modifications _are_ here. You _must_ have made this.”

“I don’t see why or _when_ I would engage in such frivolity,” she says uncharitably. She sees her own shortening fuse just as easily as Robert is sure to; it is only the poorest of moods that could possess Rosalind to call any scientific advancement, much less her own, a _frivolity_.

There falls an unnatural beat, and then Robert turns back around. “Regardless, we seem to be stuck here for the time being. Unless you’d like to have a go at fixing that boat and rowing yourself somewhere, this seems to be our only way out. So to speak.”

Disagreeing with him is uncomfortable, just as disagreeing with oneself is uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be prudent, besides; Rosalind has to admit he’s right. They are not presently overflowing with options, and she doesn’t particularly fancy going for another miserable boat outing. Nor would she care to walk in any direction on the _hope_ that there might be something worth finding within a day’s journey. So in the end, she sighs and motions for him to carry on.

Robert’s fingers have scarcely brushed along the key when he rocks back as though stung, getting to back to his feet and nearly upsetting the chair in his surprise. Someone has beat them to it: the machine issues a curt series of tones, variously long and short, utterly indifferent to the stark shock that keeps them from noting the message down until it has nearly completed. They both come out of their astonished stupor at once and begin scrambling through the drawers of the desk in search of pen and paper, but just as they’d noted in their inventory, the desk is absurdly devoid of either. The inventory, and more important its notepad, remains where Rosalind left it in the cellar—it seems she can add _carelessness_ to her growing roster of awakening recessive behaviors. A long pause indicates a message complete, and for a moment they look at each other, fearing a lost opportunity, when the message then begins repeating. Just as she’s considering the merits of darting downstairs to recover her implements, Rosalind remembers herself and reaches instead into Robert’s breast pocket, producing the pen he’s always kept there. Robert leans into the picking of his pocket, already half out of his jacket and rolling up his shirt sleeve. Absent any alternatives, Rosalind leans down and begins impatiently scrawling the message along Robert’s pale forearm. The message is mercifully short, though with her loose scrawl (she is not much practiced at writing on limbs) it still takes up the entire length between Robert’s elbow and wrist. Then the machine goes silent.

Rosalind caps the pen and lets out a slow exhale as they both examine the result:

.- .-.. .. ...- . / --- .-. / -.. . .- -.. ..--..  
A L I V E / O R / D E A D ?

“Well,” says Robert. “That’s… potentially very unfriendly.”

Rosalind frowns and makes no reply. She shifts her weight as if she means to start pacing again, but then thinks better of it, standing still with her arms folded tight around herself.

“What do you think?” The question comes falteringly, as if Robert isn’t sure how to ask. It’s uncommon for either of them to speak in two consecutive intervals. Conversing regularly is such an awkward affair.

“I think it’s an apt question,” she says plainly. “And I am not certain I wish to know the answer.”

“I think we already do,” he says softly. He waits for her to reply, but she doesn’t give him one. He drapes his jacket over the chair. He looks strangely off-kilter with one sleeve still rolled up. “It would be difficult to argue in favor of _dead_ without tacitly endorsing the concept of an afterlife.”

“That’s never been a problem before.”

“It was _different_ before.” He looks at her, somber but nowhere near as unsettled. “You know the answer. We bled. We’re caught at a fixed point, we’re starting to forget things. We’re experiencing _time_ again, Rosalind.”

Rosalind bristles at the use of her name. When speaking to oneself, names are inefficient, an unnecessary piece of the conversational order. They haven’t used each other’s names once since the time of their scattering. They haven’t _needed_ to. That Robert is now so easily allowing that unspoken rule to slip by the wayside smacks keenly of betrayal. It isn’t, of course; she’s already let just as much slip, and now she’s allowing her emotions to affect her behavior—how very _ordinary_ —but it puts her off all the same.

She gives the telegraph a reproachful look, as though this situation were its fault, then heaves a sigh and says with uncharacteristic gravity: “A theory, then. We have…” She draws breath back in, slow and reluctant, “…instantiated ourselves.”

It was a possibility they had discussed, though always in highly theoretical terms. Never, to Rosalind’s knowledge, with any clear intent. She knew Robert’s feelings on the matter, of course, it was impossible not to. She knew he longed for a life again, for the normalcy of linear existence, and for company beyond her own. She knew this just as he knew how very much she scorned the idea. She understood his feelings, but to her there was never any real choice. Giving up the unprecedented, extraordinary phenomenon of their prolonged existence and all that came with it, for… what? The opportunity to grow old, suffer entropy, fall into obscurity, and finally die?

She couldn’t— _can’t_ imagine ever wanting this, ever agreeing to it, ever allowing it to happen to her.

Robert knows this.

They each know this, and they know—it is a truth that shall for now remain unacknowledged, but from which they cannot ultimately escape—that _something_ , some unknown, unidentifiable thing, has changed. They cannot remember what it was, cannot guess, and that uncertainty sticks under Rosalind’s skin like the unpleasant pins-and-needles of a partially numbed limb. Not knowing something so critical is appalling. It’s unbearable. She knows now, and suspects Robert knows, that she won’t be able to live with it. Now that living is once more a concern: she _won’t_ be able to live with it.

But now is not the moment for that conversation. _Now_ is an abstract concept, no longer a perpetual state of being. Now, a relevant matter is tucked away; now, a relevant matter is saved for _later_.

Robert avoids her eyes, instead gazing unfocused at the floor. Having his own little internal storm, no doubt. By the time he comes out of it, she’s reasserted her composure, and faces him calmly.

“Shall I…?” He nods back at the machine.

“I suppose I can’t persuade you against it,” she says. “Let me fetch something actually intended for the pen.”

She returns to the basement and recovers the notepad. She idles for just a moment, staring up at the Contraption, thoughts churning in the terrible silence of solitude. This is the key. Its _presence_ here is telling. It is an open invitation—from herself to herself, if their suspicions are correct—to interrogate the circumstances that brought this about. Perhaps it is a fail-safe, or a thrown line, intended to bail them out. Perhaps there is something else at work.

She will have to ruminate on this, but again, not now. Later; and not just later, but _alone_.

The desire to be alone is not something she cannot remember feeling—not during their time as scattered possibilities, and not before. It should be alarming, she thinks, how quickly one adapts; but quick and often distressing adaptation is rather a familiar subject at this point.

Robert has retaken his seat at the desk and is waiting patiently when she finds him again. As soon as he sees her, he sits forward and taps out their short, simple reply: _ALIVE_

There is a moment where nothing happens,where Rosalind has nothing to occupy her but her own _thoughts_ , utterly inadequate though they now are. The whirring and clicking of the machine is a welcome draw for her attention; any distraction will serve, at this point. The answer itself, however, chills her to the bone with its presumption, its implication, and its finality.

.-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . / .... --- -- . --..-- / .-.. ..- - . -.-. . .-.-.-  
W E L C O M E / H O M E , / L U T E C E .


	2. egress

Their contact proves inconstant. Robert wastes no time asking for their identity, but, perhaps predictably, he receives no answer. He sends a few more messages, but by the end of the day nothing more has come. Far from instructions, they have been left with a mysterious greeting and only more questions. Robert stays up into the night building ink and paper tape into the design, enabling them to avoid standing constant vigil. He forgets he now needs to sleep. Rosalind finds him draped over the desk in the morning.

Time passes, as it has been wont to do. Their bodies have so long gone without need of water, food, rest, or hygiene; it is a tremendous adjustment to now, suddenly, be concerned with upkeep. Rosalind adjusts rather well, though her mood does not improve. She enjoys simple things such as bathing, brewing tea, and reading books for leisure, but she considers these a paltry exchange for what they had. Between meals and bouts of attempted relaxation, she squirrels herself away in the cellar, working and working.

By unsurprising contrast, Robert is slower to recover a regular personal regimen of self-care, but his mood lightens quickly and considerably. He plays constant music and reads avidly, often spending his time wandering between the library (always checking the paper tape, never finding any messages) and the sitting room. Like some sort of cat he drifts from perch to perch, laying various claim to both armchairs, every corner of the sofa, and the window seat, depending on his mood and the angle of the sun. Between books he plays the piano or attempts to teach himself how to cook, with middling results. When he visits the cellar, it is sometimes to work—he enjoys working, after all, tinkering and sketching and calculating—and sometimes to root around in their food stores. Upon finding the necessary equipment, he spends an entire day up to his elbows in the soft soil outside, building them a garden.

“You’ll thank me when the food runs out,” he says.

“I’ve no intention of staying here that long,” Rosalind replies.

He leaves her be. He knows how difficult this is for her. He knows it isn’t fair to ask her to let go the desire for freedom. It is what she desired most, what she loved most—apart, it must be said, from him. This will be trying for her. It is possible she will never grow accustomed.

As he sees it, their work is done, and they’ve earned a bit of rest. There are mysteries he wants to answer, of course, and he still spends many late nights waiting by the telegraph, but he feels far less urgency than she. Rather paradoxically, the return of time as a functional part of his life makes time much easier to waste. It is no longer a limitless resource, but he refuses to grasp at it as it slips through his fingers.

Sooner or later they will have to address this growing gulf between them, but neither seems keen to rush it. They’ve always worked best in tandem, and each of them mourns that in their respective way, and neither is eager to risk driving the wedge deeper.

Robert knows he is growing to love their little house. It is a strange, unsettling gift, and he would like to know how it came to them every bit as much as Rosalind would. But he would not undo it. It is not _all_ he wished for—there are still great gaps in his heart, voids that shall never be filled, but to wish for more feels ungrateful. At the very least, he hopes that in time Rosalind will join him in the sitting room during the evenings, to drink and read and play music and discuss.

Until then, he must amuse himself. With Rosalind always working, he finds himself lonely, itchy for a project but uncertain what it ought to be. He turns to the house for inspiration, spending hours combing through it, accounting for every piece of paper and every article of clothing. Entropy is their enemy once again; none of these supplies are infinite. They have a sizable generator for power, water that seems to be coming from deep underground, and food might eventually become a self-sustaining resource—but what will they do when machines break, or when pipes rust, or when resources themselves run dry? Is there a contingency? How far are they from the world?

The answers to these questions might shed further light on their situation as a whole. How the house came to be, why it is theirs, what brought about this arrangement. Rosalind wants these answers too, but for reasons that run counter to his. She wishes to leave; he, to reinforce and retain.

He is in the library perusing the shelves when the telegraph finally whirrs back to life. He rushes over and examines the paper tape closely as it feeds through.

.-. --- ... .- .-.. .. -. -.. / --- .-. / .-. --- -... . .-. - ..--..  
R O S A L I N D / O R / R O B E R T ?

His lips quirk in a smile, halfway between amused and fascinated. Does their contact know to a certainty that only one of them is present, or is it a guess? Regardless, the fact that it apparently matters enough to ask is telling in itself. It will, presumably, change the course of the ensuing conversation. He wonders what it would be like to lie, to see how his sister-self is addressed in his stead, but he’s not nearly so curious about that as he is for the circumstances surrounding himself. So he answers promptly, truthfully, and isn’t made to wait long at all before he receives a reply:

\--. --- --- -.. / - --- / ... . . / -.-- --- ..-  
... --- / - --- / ... .--. . .- -.-  
G O O D / T O / S E E / Y O U  
S O / T O / S P E A K

Robert studies the message, not quite certain how to interpret it. Up until now, it was still entirely plausible that this contact was Rosalind or himself—some other _them_ from some other reality. Plausible, if not convincing. From the very first message he’d found himself doubting that hypothesis; it was all too vague, too mysterious, not the sort of messages they’d send themselves. They’d send answers with no fuss, not waste time on coy little jokes. This humor is certainly droll, but it doesn’t quite match their style. Who, then, is this?

There is a part of him that craves Rosalind’s input. They have always been two halves of a whole and it is difficult to imagine doing anything without her; now that it’s not automatic, there is a part of him that actively rebels against the idea of handling anything on his own. But at the same time, he can guess all too easily what she’d think. She’d be put off by the initial question, suspicious at the subsequent familiarity. Her skepticism may indeed be well founded, but in Robert’s estimation it is no way to proceed. One gains nothing by telegraphing distrust, pun very possibly intended. Before their entanglement, it was always he who took tasks that required the lighter touch—the wrangling of Mr. DeWitt, for example. Convincing a desperate, drowning (or is it _un-_ drowned?) man to give up that which is most precious to him—no, for that they needed Robert’s gentle manner.

That thought leaves him with a sour taste in his mouth, and he shrugs it off quickly. He’ll handle this, then, on his own. Light, gentle. Anyway, there’s no sense running off to get Rosalind while he has the contact at attention, for who knows how long.

This doesn’t mean he _won’t_ bring her in on it, at some point. Of course he will! It would be ridiculous not to. Just… just not yet.

So decided, he rereads the message again, smiles to himself, and answers: _CHARMED, I THINK._

Quite a time-consuming method of banter, but after going several days without his sister’s company, he’ll happily take this as a substitute.

.... --- .-- / .- .-. . / .-. . ... --- ..- .-. -.-. . ...  
H O W / A R E / R E S O U R C E S

Well, so much for banter, though once he’s parsed this it does at least partially answer his question about supplies. A message about resources implies some capacity to provide—checking in to make sure they have everything they need, willing and able to assist if they don’t. Which is not nearly as comforting as Robert would expect. After all, what does that imply about the contact’s proximity to and knowledge of the situation? How far does it extend? Is this someone who’s been tasked with keeping them alive in this cold, distant way, perhaps by sending them what they need and leaving it at that—and how is that accomplished? Now that he’s thought about it at greater length, far from having his curiosity piqued, Robert finds himself feeling rather uneasy. Rosalind had considered their first telegraph conversation to be sinister, and now Robert can’t exactly disagree. An unknown entity communicating to them from an unknown universe, possessing information on them and their situation that surpasses their own—it doesn’t exactly inspire comfort. Add to that the constant possibility of an abrupt halt to the conversation, and Robert is suddenly feeling very cagey.

He answers, endeavoring not to let any caution show: _ALL’S WELL_

He waits, but nothing comes through. Last time it was asking for an identity that caused (or was at least immediately adjacent to) a very long communication drought, so he’s wary of repeating the question, as relevant as it continues to be. But this person could cease contact at any time, and correlation is not a true indicator of causation. Robert is utterly at the mercy of whomever this is, and they must know he’ll want to keep asking, so perhaps he oughtn’t stop himself.

After a bit of debate, he attempts a more casual approach: _WHAT AM I TO CALL YOU?_

Robert is relieved when the answer returns almost immediately, though it is far from being what he’d expected. He waits patiently as the message is tapped out, intrigue and trepidation growing steadily in equal measure as he translates each letter.

-. --- - / .-.. .. -.- . / - .... .. ... .-.-.- / .-- . / .- --. .-. . . -.. .-.-.-  
N O T / L I K E / T H I S . / W E / A G R E E D .

Robert takes a moment to digest this and all its multifaceted, rather unnerving implications, but before he even begins to know how to reply another message is already coming through:

.. / -.- -. --- .-- / -.-- --- ..- / -.. --- -. .----. - / .-. . -- . -- -... . .-.  
I / K N O W / Y O U / D O N ’ T / R E M E M B E R

Well, there’s that at least. Robert rubs a hand over his mouth, thinking carefully. He would very much like to trust this mysterious source, but without hard evidence or personal recollection it’s impossible to verify this story. Trusting someone who _knows_ you can’t remember the context of that trust is treacherous territory. He knows this. Just as _they_ must know this.

He responds: _HOW, THEN?_

There’s a pause, and he holds his breath. They certainly are as skittish as he’d imagined. He can see balancing his intense curiosity with the respectful distance that seems desired will be a real challenge.

Fortunately, it seems he’s not managed to scare them off just yet:

-.. --- / -.-- --- ..- / - .-. ..- ... - / -- . / -- .-. / .-.. ..- - . -.-. .  
D O / Y O U / T R U S T / M E / M R / L U T E C E

Again he’s left staring at the message, wrestling with how to take it and how to respond. He knows the choice is more or less an illusion. In fact, to be less charitable, it could hardly be anything but an obvious trap. Answering one way, the sensible way, will lead him straight to a predictable dead end. The alternative may be a fully transparent lie, but at least it will keep lines and opportunities open.

He _really_ ought to bring Rosalind in on this, now more than ever, but he can’t seem to tear himself away, can’t envision himself going down to the cellar to see her looking at him, at all these messages, with that heavy-hearted skepticism of hers.

It has been a very long time since he had something to himself.

He rubs his thumb contemplatively over the transmission knob before finally answering, quickly as if for fear of changing his mind: _YES_

And without having to wait much time at all, he receives his reply:

\- .... . -. / .. / .... .- ...- . / .- / .--. .-. --- .--. --- ... .. - .. --- -. / ..-. --- .-. / -.-- --- ..- .-.-.-  
T H E N / I / H A V E / A / P R O P O S I T I O N / F O R / Y O U .

///

The moment she comes back upstairs and catches Robert burning something in the open flame of the stove is the moment Rosalind knows he is keeping something from her. She doesn’t care to waste time and dignity by asking an obvious question and thus forcing him to lie directly to her. Instead she says with a distinctly casual air, “Ah, good, I was just thinking it must be teatime. We really ought to build ourselves a clock, now that it matters again.”

“We’re again without frame of reference,” he points out, smoothly filling the kettle and placing it on the stove; he gives no sign of having been caught, but she knows too well what she’d seen. It is possible, of course, that he sees through her performed nonchalance, but if that’s the case then they’re in a draw and there is nothing to be done about it now.

“Indeed. Though I suppose we might try it anyway.” She sets about gathering the necessary accouterments. It _is_ nice to be able to enjoy tea again. Rituals are good for the soul, no matter how much they pale in comparison to what the so-called soul once had.

“I heard from our friend,” says Robert after an ungainly pause.

“Oh?” Rosalind watches him closely. His back is turned; he watches the kettle as if willing it not to boil. She’d suspected that’s what it was about, and thus it’s a surprise to hear him admit it.

“Still couldn’t persuade them to give a name,” says Robert. “They obviously know who we are, and… interestingly enough, I think they might have some means of getting us what we need, if we have need of anything. I wonder if they had a hand in putting this place together.”

“Entirely possible.” That _is_ interesting. More interesting is why he’s telling her about it. If it’s not this he’s hiding, then what? “I don’t suppose they’d do it out of the goodness of their heart.”

“It’s not especially likely,” says Robert with a small smirk. He turns away from the kettle and goes to one of the cabinets, perusing their modest selection. “I was thinking Darjeeling today.”

“As you like. Is there something they _desire_ , then? You know this sounds like exactly the sort of thing we should be avoiding until we have a good deal more information. You should have come and got me.”

“There wasn’t time,” he says, spooning the tea into the little basket that sits in the pot. “I didn’t want to risk losing them. There wasn’t much more to it anyway. Next time I’ll be sure to alert you.”

“Hmm.” Rosalind collects the cups, cream, and sugar bowl on their little tea tray, then carries that to the kitchen table and sits, waiting for the kettle to sing its siren song. So, something more to that than he’s letting on. Does he in fact know the contact’s identity? Or perhaps what it is they want? Or how it is they know the things they know? Worst of all possibilities, did they _ask_ Robert to keep her in the dark, and did he elect to listen?

There is one thing she knows now, at least: this contact _cannot_ be either of them. She’d already suspected that when they had not initially answered the question of their identity; now it is certain. They would not keep things from themselves—an ironic thing to think, after what she’s just seen, but this is different. She is sure of it.

The kettle starts whistling after a few minutes of shared silence, and Robert keeps his back turned as he focuses intently on the task of pouring the steaming water into the pot.

“And how has your day been?” he says conversationally. “What is it you’re working on, again?”

The offhand way this is uttered makes Rosalind think it’s more of a jab than a genuine question. He knows she isn’t telling him everything either. She hasn’t been particularly deft in passing off her constant sequestering as unassuming busywork. She has no talent for deceiving him; it’s not a skill she’s ever needed, ever used. For as long as they’ve been together, they have functioned together, and now, barely a week into this new and uncharted territory, they’re fracturing.

That is why, of course, she can’t tell him what she’s working on. That is why it is so very vital that she continue to work.

“I’ve been running the Contraption through every gauntlet I can devise,” she says, which isn’t far from the truth. They conceal their secrets poorly and lie in similar capacity, each leaning close enough to the truth that it makes further prying difficult. Such artifice. “I want to be certain it is in fact as we designed it. No surprises.”

“Ah.” He carries the steeping pot over and sits opposite her, pouring a little cream into his cup. “Probably wise. You think it will serve its old purpose? That is, do you think we can _use_ it?”

“It seems an unfair loophole,” says Rosalind, setting a few sugar cubes in her cup. “When Elizabeth took herself out of the equation, she closed all the doors, lost that which set her apart. It is apparent that somehow and for some reason we have done the same, but we’ve been left with the means to open those doors back up. It hardly seems sporting. Not that it would come close to giving us back what we lost. For that…” She trails off with an innocuous shrug.

“You’re not suggesting suicide by machine,” says Robert with an arched eyebrow. The tea hasn’t steeped long enough, but he reaches out and pours himself a cup anyway. Overeager, or perhaps impatient to escape this conversation.

“Nothing of the kind. Our murders would be impossible to replicate, for one thing.” She declines pouring for herself just yet, preferring— _requiring_ a good strong brew. “I do wonder, however, if a compromise might be reached.”

“Hm.” He brackets his hands around his teacup, watching the steam curl off it without raising it to his lips. “Do you need any help with it? I do rather miss tinkering with the old beast.”

“You’ve your garden to tend,” says Rosalind smoothly. It’s not intended as a barb, but he seems to take it that way, eyes narrowing over the tea as he takes a sip. “Let me run the experiments for now. We can resume business as usual when I’m sure it isn’t an elaborately sabotaged ruse.”

“I daresay you’re becoming paranoid,” he says lightly.

“I thought it was cautious.”

“They aren’t unrelated.”

“Mm.” She gives them a moment to sit in quiet before pouring her tea, then rising to her feet, taking her cup with her. “I think I’ll have mine downstairs. I’ve a long day ahead.”

“Try not to become too much of a shut-in.”

She waves him off as she turns into the narrow corridor leading down to the cellar and descends the stairs. Once in the cellar she steps into the warm glow of light cast in a semi-circular array of fractals, emanating variously from several reappropriated lamps, some light sources of her own hastily constructed design, and the Contraption itself.

Yes, she did want to ensure the Contraption hadn’t been tampered with, or wasn’t an extensive fake, or anything of the sort. But that’s been done and done again. Even working alone, she’s had more than enough time to check both the machine and her work, and Robert knows that. What she has in fact discovered, and chosen not to share, is that the machine is broken. Its engine runs and is running now, but it cannot truly be activated until it has undergone significant repair. Part of the damage is physical, some smashed edges and dents in the casing, as though someone has taken a wrench to it; and part is internal, as of an overcharged circuit. It was difficult to notice—even the external damage is hard to spot, and so they had both missed it on their initial exploration. What it implies, she does not know. She cannot guess what caused the damage. It merits investigation as well as repair. That she evaded sharing these details with Robert will hardly obfuscate much; if Robert believes she has already completed her tests for sabotage and found nothing, he will know that continued work on it must be to some other purpose. It would be impossible for him not to guess at her whims, but he likely trusts that she would not use the Contraption without him, and if she intended to use it at all, she would tell him so.

She can’t say whether or not he would be correct in these assumptions, and she wonders if that ought to worry her more than it does. She cannot spare the time or the energy to wonder, however. Right now, she needs to work.

The Contraption hums with low, constant energy, emitting a faint copper scent one feels on the tip of one’s tongue. The air is thick with the press of static. Even working at partial capacity, Rosalind loves the feel of the machine, its mysterious enormity, its sheer incomprehensibility. The Contraption contains, or rather serves as a gateway to, vast multitudes beyond its limited structure. They built something they were just on the cusp of understanding, and it wasn’t until they died and then didn’t that they were able to truly grasp it.

Now that comprehension is waning fast, threatening to be swallowed up in the utter mundanity of ordinary existence. Rosalind knows her time is limited. She must make her repairs and ready it for any possible use, and she must do it soon.

She sets her tea delicately on the worktable and continues examining the Contraption, pacing steadily around it. Its steady thrum, the pulses one feels deep under one’s sternum, these help her think. No distractions. She must not think of Robert and the strips of dashed-and-dotted paper tape he let burn in front of her, to keep from her. Nor of how much simpler, how much _better_ this would be if she could bring him into this with her. Nor of how happy he is becoming, how alive he now seems, how much she _knows_ he wants this chance at life again, the opportunity to live and grow and die and behind him leave a true and recognizable mark on the world.

Rosalind lets her eyes fall shut, and she listens to the oppressive mechanical whirring that surrounds her, willing it to become an ocean of waves that will drown this house, the possibility of this house, out of reality and out of her mind.

///

It is two weeks after Rosalind saw Robert burn his transcript. They are, for the moment, transposed. Robert keeps to the cellar more and more, building what, Rosalind does not know. She does not ask. Her repairs are complete; all that remains is finding the right moment. The moment shall never arrive while Robert monopolizes the workspace, almost as if he knows and is trying to prevent something, but she can be patient. Instead she drifts about the library, perusing the spines of their vast multitude of books, and more importantly, waiting. She has been at this for some hours, reading pieces of this and that, retiring to the sitting room only to return after twenty minute intervals. More old mortal habits returning to her. She does not sit still particularly well, especially not when waiting for something.

Finally she tires of passivity, knowing that time grows short; Robert will find his way back to her soon enough. She strolls to the telegraph machine, gazes imperiously down at it without deigning to sit, and then taps out a message: _ANYONE THERE?_

The reply is prompt, brief, and infuriating.

... --- -. --. -... .. .-. -..  
S O N G B I R D

She understands, of course, the immediate relevance of what should be a ridiculous answer. This is a code, something Robert and the contact have evidently devised. Something to bar her from conversation. No one appreciates knowing that they are being kept out of something; for Rosalind, it is an open challenge, a brazen insult. Someone may as well have slapped her with a glove. She narrows her eyes at the machine built from her own designs before responding, rather doggedly: _CAGE_

It would be a child’s trick, so simple a passphrase. Surely Robert would not be so naïve as to think something so obvious could slip her by. And yet, the insult of it is all the greater, because her answer soon returns:

. ...- . .-. -.-- - .... .. -. --. / .. ... / .. -. / .--. .-.. .- -.-. .  
.... --- .-- / ... --- --- -. ..--..  
E V E R Y T H I N G / I S / I N / P L A C E  
H O W / S O O N ?

Rosalind’s lip curls, physically repulsed by the secrecy, the full awareness and confirmation of just how much Robert has been keeping from her these several weeks. She, of course, is guilty of the same crime, but she, it must be said, has not resorted to _conspiring_ against him with an outsider.

Enough. Focus is critical. The correct guess at an offensively simple password was one matter; the continued ambiguity of what is being discussed is another, not so easily solved. _How soon_ , they ask— _How soon_ will Robert’s project be complete, she presumes. Whatever he’s been working on in the cellar must be connected, though she can’t imagine how. As far as she’s been able to observe, it’s been busywork, curiosities, taking things apart and seeing how they might fit back together. Robert has always been inquisitive in the workroom. None of it implies any sort of grand secret project to Rosalind.

 _Enough_. There is no time. She must decide how to approach this, what sort of risk to take. To err on the side of caution may well get her locked out. Robert has been astute in his various assessments of her behavior since they arrived—caution feeding into paranoia—and it is true that it was once _she_ who took risks, and Robert who would hedge and dither. Now, quite ironically, they seem to have switched. Now, to convince this person she is Robert, she must instead reenact herself of the (frustratingly literal) past.

So, without further hesitation, she leaps without looking: _NOW_

There follows a pause that feels like a deliberation, and she fears that may have been too much. The fear is short-lived, but the answer offers little comfort. It is long, longer than any message she’s seen sent so far, taking well over a minute to complete. She translates each word rapidly, and with each progressive letter its unraveling contents chill her deeper, down to the very bone.

.-. --- ... .- .-.. .. -. -.. / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .... .- ...- . / -.-. --- -- .--. .-.. . - . -.. / .-- --- .-. -.- / -... -.-- / -. --- .-- .-.-.- /  
.- -.-. - .. ...- .- - . / - .... . / -.-. --- -. - .-. .- .--. - .. --- -. .-.-.- / .. / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .- - - ..- -. . / - --- / -.-- --- ..- .-. /  
..-. .-. . --.- ..- . -. -.-. -.-- / .- -. -.. / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . / .- -... .-.. . / - --- / -.-. --- -- . / - .... .-. --- ..- --. .... .-.-.- /  
-... .-. .. -. --. / .-- .... .- - / .-- . / -.. .. ... -.-. ..- ... ... . -.. .-.-.-  
R O S A L I N D / W I L L / H A V E / C O M P L E T E D / W O R K / B Y / N O W . /  
A C T I V A T E / T H E / C O N T R A P T I O N . / I / W I L L / A T T U N E / T O / Y O U R /  
F R E Q U E N C Y / A N D / Y O U / W I L L / B E / A B L E / T O / C O M E / T H R O U G H . /  
B R I N G / W H A T / W E / D I S C U S S E D .

Rosalind reels back, taking a sharp step from the desk, mind racing, hands trembling. Is it anxiety or rage? She supposes there isn’t much difference now. Her chest feels tight; her thoughts are cumbersomely disorganized and there is no time to order them. Set now on the path of quick, decisive action, she departs the library briskly, not bothering to finish out the conversation or pry for details. She’s seen more than enough.

The question most forcibly rattling her cage is _how_ , how is it they know what she’s been doing, how could they _possibly_ know? The only conceivable answer is that Robert, having figured it out as she’d known he would, _told them_. And of far greater concern is the implication that Robert has been intending for some time to—to _what_ , exactly? Abandon her? What is the nature of this plan?

Enough.

The time for isolation and subterfuge and beating round bushes has well and truly ended. Rosalind storms down the cellar steps until she comes to her brother’s worktable, where he sits hunched over a partially constructed mechanism she doesn’t bother to examine. He looks up at her with a startled expression.

“Something the matter?” he says, his tone carrying a note of disapproval with her graceless entrance.

“I wonder how it is we’ve been rent apart so thoroughly,” she says, affecting a cold crispness somewhat offset by the subtle quiver of emotion in her voice. “It scarcely took a month for us to reach this point. Are you satisfied with the way things stand at present?”

“If you’re going to be purposefully esoteric then I shan’t bother trying to interpret,” he says, matching her tone without the indignity of unchecked feeling.

“You’ve a great deal of nerve, speaking to me like that,” she says, her voice now shaking in earnest. She hates how quickly she’s slipped—or been pushed, really—from her perch of objective calm, but there is no pulling together now; nor can she take any of it back. Time only moves in one direction now. “After you’ve been willfully obfuscating matters from me. I know you’ve been covering your tracks, your little conversations with _whomever_ it is on the other end of that blasted telegraph. I know further what they intend you to do.”

It takes Robert only the merest breath of an instant to infer what she’s getting at; he gets to his feet abruptly, the stool scraping harshly out from under him. “You spoke to them,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t believe it.

“Your little password was truly a sorry effort,” she says scornfully.

“What did they say?!” he demands, now sounding furious; at least she is no longer the only one who has fallen to letting passion infect her.

“First you tell me why you kept this from me,” she says, “and what it is they want from you.”

“I should think the first matter obvious,” says Robert, taking a step back from her and from the worktable, putting distance between them. “Since we’ve arrived here you’ve had only one thing on your mind, and that’s _undoing_ it all.”

“Why shouldn’t I,” she snaps. “This has never been anything but a stopgap. As long as we don’t know the terms of our existence, we are powerless to affect it. I will not remain in a prison, no matter how well furnished.”

“We’ll get nowhere with you yanking the carpet out from under us.” Robert turns away, one hand rising to his face to massage his temples. “It is a matter of _perspective_. From one angle, you see a prison; from the other, I see a _gift_. If we destroy it before we understand it, we’ll never have the answers you want.”

“On the matter of this miserable house, brother, I don’t desire answers at all.” She takes advantage of his position to take a swift, silent step nearer the worktable and get a better look at what he’s building. “I simply want _freedom_.”

“We _are_ free,” he says irritably. “We have our lives again. I do not see that as a loss.”

“So the cat always dies in the end,” she says coolly, the metaphor rising up from some recessive memory, a fragment of dwindling knowledge from her life outside the natural order.

Robert, it seems, is without this same memory. “Who said anything about a cat?”

“Oh, I’m sure someone will. Eventually.” She turns his half-built project toward her and understands, at last, that what he’s building is a clock.

“Is this all?” she says, genuinely nonplussed.

He turns to see her examining his work, and lets his arms hang limp at his sides.

“ _This_ is what they want you to bring?” She looks up at him. “A simple timepiece?”

“It is a prototype,” says Robert. “Not finished. The idea is that it will eventually be able to adjust its time automatically to suit one’s environment. That’s the only way for us to be certain of the time here, after all.” He looks away, seeming annoyed he’s had to reveal such piddling information. “When I’ve finished it I’ll offer it for patent.”

“ _Patent_?” She gawps at him. She’d laugh if she weren’t so busy being stunned. “Do you mean to tell me this has all been some sort of business venture? That your friend is—is nothing more than a _benefactor_?”

“It is _work_ , Rosalind,” he says with bite. “This is what I’ve wanted: to leave my mark. To make things again. That is _all_ , as you put it. Did you really think me capable of some great conspiracy against you?” He huffs out a frustrated breath, looking not at her, but at his unfinished design. “They will pay, or provide what we require, in exchange for work. We can subsist. This is something _we_ must have set up. You knew my feelings on the matter, we must have made some arrangement, some compromise—”

“This is no compromise.” She looks at him, appalled. “We have no memory of the circumstances. We left ourselves no instructions, our only choice to trust this phantom who has taken every step to drive a wedge between us. You’re willing to simply take this person’s offer at face value? We’ve no idea who they _are_ , why and how they know our situation, what they intend. They hold power over us. To give them what they want without question is utter foolishness, Robert, you _know_ that.”

It is the first time she’s used his name, she realizes. It sticks in her throat. She glares at his half-rendered clock, for a moment feeling an entirely childish urge to smash it to pieces.

“I’ve no desire to involve us in any danger,” he says quietly. “I needed your help. You’ve made it particularly difficult to ask.”

“My help, is it.” She pivots away from the worktable and crosses the space to the Contraption, setting about the process of activation. “Your beloved benefactor knew how to receive it; they recommended you take without asking. Smart of them. It’s the only thing that would have worked.”

“Rosalind, please,” says Robert, watching her warily as she sets their great machine in motion. “What are you—”

“You wish to remain here, work away to your heart’s content? I shan’t stop you.” Rosalind throws her weight into the lever, and the Contraption whirrs noisily to life, sparking and flaring. Robert takes a quick step back from it as though afraid. Rosalind turns to face him. “I am going to see just who it is that is working so terribly hard to set us at odds. Do not follow me, brother. I shall return soon.”

“Rosalind—” Robert flinches again as the air beside her ripples and parts, a tear opening up just as she’d been given to expect. He stares at her, awestruck, perhaps terrified. “ _Wait_!”

Turning away from him in that moment is the most difficult thing she’s ever done. She forces herself to move, propels herself through the gap in reality, into some other world where he might well not even exist. She feels a horrible clench in her gut, almost the urge to be ill, as the full reality of what she’s done hits her. The tear closes behind her. It is only when she can no longer hear Robert’s objections that she opens her eyes, breathless and, for the first time in working memory, afraid.

What she sees is momentarily incomprehensible. She suffers an overwhelming fit of vertigo, sways and nearly drops before catching herself on the edge of the Contraption— _their_ Contraption, their cellar, their house. The layout is different, not so many reappropriated lamps, but it is unquestionably the same place. Impossible. _Not_ impossible. She is bleeding again.

Standing at the Contraption’s controls is a woman, her clothes in a state of great disarray, rumpled and dirty, not the sharp, crisp garments they once were. Her hair, long and vibrantly red, is kept in a long, loose braid that hangs over her shoulder, messy and frayed, untamed ends standing visibly against the her sweaty brow or having come undone from the overall. She stares back at Rosalind with eyes which, though identical, are tired and heavily lidded, showing the wear of sleep deprivation.

The silence that passes then is unbearable. Rosalind regards her unkempt self with uncharacteristic speechlessness, her hands falling useless to her sides.

Her double sighs. “I told you this would happen.”

It’s only when Rosalind deduces this was not directed at her that she realizes there is a third person in the room, and she turns around.

Tucked across the room is a desk with a telegraph machine, identical to the one from their library. Standing over it, having apparently just been operating it, is a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair, an intense gaze, and the fringe of a poorly kept beard coming in.

“ _DeWitt_?” Rosalind blurts, needing once again to steady herself on the Contraption.

“Madam Lutece,” he replies rather gruffly. He steps out from behind the telegraph and crosses to her, offering her a slightly-stained handkerchief. She takes it automatically, still staring up at him in amazement. “I was expecting your brother”

“I told you it was a poor passphrase.” The other Rosalind sighs, wiping her hands on her skirt as she steps away from the worktable. “Far too obvious. And all your scheming was bound to get her blood up.”

“Robert didn’t object.”

“ _Robert_ was foolish enough to believe his dear sister wouldn’t outright invade his personal affairs.” Her eyes flick up to Rosalind’s and they hold each other’s gaze for a moment, Rosalind still struggling to clot the flow of blood from her nose. There’s no resentment in the look, but there is a certain weariness. “And I didn’t force the issue because I believe this may be the preferable order of things. Let her see it for herself, without needing to be convinced. But we can’t afford to debate it; Robert will be trying to come through now, and that would make a real botch of things. It will be cleaner this way.” She makes a dismissive gesture, waving Booker along. “Now, off with you.”

“Sure glad you took all that time telling me we didn’t have time to talk about it,” mutters Booker.

They have a _rapport_ , which might be the oddest thing about this. Rosalind reaches out to take her own arm—that is to say, the _other_ Rosalind, this new reality’s Rosalind, reaches out to guide her newly arrived self down from the Contraption; and Rosalind, that is to say the Rosalind we’ve thus far been considering default, offers herself no resistance, still staring at Booker in quiet disbelief.

Once she’s set aside, the unkempt Rosalind turns her attention back to the machine, reactivating it. “All right, you’ll only have a moment to pass through, so be quick about it,” she tells Booker. “You have another handkerchief ready? Good. Prepare to brace yourself on something. It’s going to be a difficult transition.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Booker steps up to the Contraption and waits obediently for the way to reopen. “I have done this a few times, you know.”

“No excuse to be cocky.”

Rosalind completes the reactivation, and the tear reopens itself, a murky fissure in the air, through which they can all see the faint outline of Robert, hear his distorted cries. The Rosalind he’s pursuing twitches as she hears his voice again, hears him entreating her to wait—there seems to be some temporal dilation happening here. Part of her desperately wants to rush back to him, but she stands rooted.

Booker, however, does not hesitate. With the stubborn confidence of Comstock before (beside?) him, he steps through, and his… guide? colleague? shuts the machine down once again, sealing them in their respective cellars.

“Now, then.” She turns back to herself, passing a grease-stained hand across her brow. “Perhaps you’d like some tea. We’ve quite a bit to discuss.”


	3. the unmade tangent

It’s all a matter of perspective.

The moment Robert sees his sister-self disappear into the tear, he’s rushing to follow her, damn what she says; and the moment he reaches the threshold, a man steps through instead. The gap closes behind him, forcing Robert to stagger back, staring, stunned, at his unexpected guest.

“Mr. DeWitt,” he stammers, incredulous, wholly thunderstruck at the sight.The man shouldn’t _exist_ anymore, that was the idea—the unfortunate endgame of the experiment, of freeing Elizabeth and damning Comstock. Yet there he is, plain as day, the man whose life Robert willingly plunged into chaos until the only way out was his death.

Booker catches himself on the Contraption, struggling to keep himself upright, his free hand going immediately to a handkerchief in his breast pocket, catching the blood as it seeps from his nose. “Goddammit,” he mutters, dabbing a bit more roughly than he really needs to. “Couldn’t have designed a smoother ride, huh?”

“What the _devil_ are you—” Robert takes another step back as though the man might be contagious. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Good to see you too, Robert,” says Booker, muffled and bafflingly wry. He glances up from his ministrations, catching Robert’s eye with a familiarity that knocks Robert even further off balance than he’d been, then fixes his attention back on the handkerchief. Robert’s eye is drawn to it as well, to the distinctive stitching around the edge; he recognizes it, of course. It is his.

Unaware of Robert’s astonishment over this realization, Booker lowers the cloth and raises his fingers gingerly to check on the state of things. The fabric is quite stained, but the hemorrhage itself seems to have ceased rather quickly. “Sorry to drop in like this. I guess things didn’t really work out as planned.”

Robert’s lips move to shape letters, but no words actually make it past. He’s caught staring at Booker, the absolute impossibility of him, standing there holding his handkerchief and addressing him by _name_. This is an unprecedented state of affairs, this reversal of roles—Robert gets the distinct impression that Booker DeWitt actually knows _more_ about the ins and outs of this preposterous situation than he. He wonders if this is at all what it was like when he’d arrived in the poor man’s office, crisp and curt and indifferent to his obvious misery, and had coldly demanded an infant of him. If this is anything close to that, then it is nothing less than he deserves.

“A few weeks ago you asked me who I was,” says Booker, stepping down from the Contraption, stepping toward Robert. “I wanted to tell you. We decided it was better like this.”

“Y—” Robert’s throat feels strangely parched. He swallows thickly. “ _You_?”

“What do you remember?” Booker is watching him with an expression Robert has _surely_ never seen him make, at least never directed at _him_ —a quiet concern, a vested interest. He takes another step closer, moving subtly into Robert’s personal space, _far_ too familiar, far too automatic, too knowing and too comfortable and too _much_. Robert takes a sharp, stumbling step back, drawing a shuddering breath, and Booker stops at once.

“Well,” says Booker slowly, “guess that answers that.” He averts his eyes, gazing instead into the middle distance, seeming… suddenly moody? “Yeah. She told me not to get my hopes up.”

Robert can’t keep up with this, the absurd revelation that _Booker DeWitt_ has been his mysterious, polite, well-spoken, _knowledgeable_ contact; that he is now _here_ and looking at him like that and coming so close; that there are things Robert should and does not _remember._ All this puts the introduction of another pronoun well beyond him, leaving him unable to connect the available dots. “Who… said what?” he says, a bit breathless.

“Your sister,” says Booker, meeting his eyes again. “Or… whatever she is.”

“R—Rosalind told you—” Robert shakes his head as though physically rejecting this information. “Just now? When she—”

“No, no.” Booker holds up a hand. “Another one. It’s kind of a long story and I don’t explain it real well. You were supposed to be the one to…” He glances back at the Contraption and shrugs. “We were thinking being in that environment would jog things, or—well, I don’t really get it. Point is you were supposed to come through, but then your—she…. Well, she’s kind of the same in every universe, isn’t she?” He shrugs again, then reaches up to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Look, I can do my best to explain it, but… maybe upstairs? Gettin’ so I feel like I practically live in this basement.”

“This…” Robert struggles to pull himself together. This dissembling display simply won’t do, no matter _how_ mathematically problematic Booker’s presence is. He has come from a parallel variation of this house; that makes _some_ sort of sense, surely. Rosalind is there now, with another of herself, and won’t that be a wonderful time for all.

And he…? Booker is behaving as though he hasn’t seen Robert in some time, whatever significance _that_ holds for him, and that forces the difficult question of _why_. Why _wouldn’t_ he be there, another Robert to go with this other Rosalind? The question makes his stomach turn uncomfortably. He has got to right himself.

Upstairs. Yes. A spot of tea and daylight will do him good. He’s reluctant to leave the Contraption, still wishing to follow Rosalind to wherever she’s gone, but… if there are two of her, she’ll be doubly accounted for, and twice as capable of looking after herself. He need not worry himself over her; and what’s more, he can’t afford to. He simply hasn’t the energy to spare. Without the benefit of their lost omnipresence, he can only cope with so much at the moment.

“Come on, then,” he says warily, leading Booker to the stairs.

The worst of it isn’t the absence of his sister nor the impossibility— _improbability_ of Booker’s presence. It’s something else, something he can’t quite name yet. Something in Booker’s attitude, the relaxed manner Robert’s never been privy to (so far as he knows), that expression he’s never seen ( _so far as he knows_ ), the (literally, proverbially) bloody handkerchief, the way Booker calls him _Robert_ …

Well, it’s obvious, to Robert most of all, what these pieces signify. But the gaps in his memory and his heart, the way his mind has papered over all relevant knowledge, the hopeless void where there should sit recognition, _comprehension_ —it all puts him in a uniquely difficult position.

Difficult. Not unique.

The mind adapts. To incomprehensibility, to loss, to heartbreak. Sometimes, as it did in Booker himself, it adapts abominably. Sometimes, the mind wills itself to forget.

///

The exhaustive precision with which Rosalind relates her tale cannot be overstated.

Before she embarks on its relation, she (that is Rosalind, that is the Rosalind of this new-same universe—there _is_ an end to this grammatic torment of duplicate proper nouns, but as this narrative remains relatively ordered, its confusion must be suffered a little while longer) guides her visiting self up the stairs, from kitchen to dining room to library, finally to the sitting room. All these rooms are in quite a bit of disarray, and the sitting room is perhaps the worst. The visiting Rosalind regards the room and its cluttered, seemingly flung-about furnishings, arranged so as to create a maze one must wade through, with mild surprise. Tidiness does not rank _highest_ among her priorities, but it is certainly a consideration. It is clear enough that this Rosalind’s priorities have slipped, or shifted—from the grease staining her hands to the unprofessional rumpling of her clothes to the way she wears her hair, even the way she carries herself, it is evident she has little thought for presentation. Her host shoves aside a stack of papers with such carelessness that they go spilling onto the floor, and promptly settles herself down into the opened spot on the sofa, striking a particularly undignified lounge.

“Sit,” she invites, gesturing vaguely at the array of undesirable options. Rosalind regards them all with an eyebrow raised before collecting an empty tea tray and a tangle of clothes and blankets and setting them gingerly on the floor. DeWitt’s handkerchief she sets on the floor as well, no longer needing it. The bleeding has stopped, though a headache persists. She drags the freed armchair around to an angle that better faces her counterpart, then sits, stiff and formal. As if she has something to prove.

The sprawling Rosalind reaches into her open jacket and withdraws a silver case, opening it and selecting what appears to be a hand-rolled cigarette. Fixing this between her lips, she replaces the case and from the opposing jacket pocket withdraws a book of matches. She takes her time lighting up. Rosalind stares at her, hands folded tightly in her lap, questions boiling up even as she fights to remain calm.

Cigarette lit, Rosalind waves the match to put it out and tosses it to the rug. She takes a long, patient drag and holds the smoke in her lungs for a moment longer than seems necessary before breathing it into the already musty air.

“Trading away our good health for foul habit, are we,” Rosalind says crisply, unable to keep herself at bay any longer.

Her host smirks, pinching the cigarette between two fingers and holding it delicately. “It’s only once in a great while,” she says. “I’ve held out against habit well enough. Though it’s nothing you need to work yourself up over.”

“What on _earth_ has happened to you?” Rosalind demands.

Her counterpart shrugs. “There is a great deal to recount,” she says. “It will go quicker and smoother without questions.”

“Begin, then.” Rosalind’s fingers twine together in her lap, a nervous tic her double can plainly see. “I should like to understand everything.”

“I know.” Rosalind smirks again, taking another slow drag. “The story I am going to tell you is something that once belonged to both of us. For you, it has been unwritten. For me…” She moves her free hand lazily to indicate the room, as if this explains anything. “It will help if you free yourself from the notion that we are the same person. Our paths have deviated tremendously, as much should be obvious. We have been split. Think of me as a self-contained entity. Another name might do the job. I’ve been considering one for a while, for this exact purpose. A new identity. So.” She takes a moment to smoke some more. “In the story, I am Rosalind. But now, the person sitting before you is Rene.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Am I not?” Rene, as she shall here on be known, studies her cigarette idly, a clear show of indifference with her counterpart’s interrogations. “Would you prefer _Roz?_ We’ve always hated that. Some things we still have in common.” She lets her eyes drift back to Rosalind, lifting her eyebrows as she smokes. “I am not who I was. And I rather like the sound of Rene. Rene Lutece, your unplanned sister.” She smiles without much humor. “Unless you’d like us to be Rosalind 1 and Rosalind 2.”

“I don’t see why it matters,” snaps Rosalind, blissfully ignorant of the stresses of narrative. “Rosalind, Rene, I don’t care a jot. Explain yourself. Explain this house. Explain Mr. DeWitt, and the circumstances Robert and I found ourselves in, which I can only imagine you helped to orchestrate somehow. Where is _your_ Robert, or does he carry a new name as well?”

Rene gazes at her, steady and quiet. There’s a kind of stillness in her eyes that gives Rosalind pause, forcing her frustration to settle a bit. Rene lets another puff of smoke slip out from between her lips and says, “You must promise not to interrupt me.”

Rosalind sighs and nods her assent. It is an understandable request, and she is not a child.

Rene makes her wait a little longer, as though she must prepare herself. “Some of this you’ll remember,” she says. “It may come back to you as I tell it. Memories are easily persuaded back into us, I’ve found.”

The exhaustive precision with which _Rene_ relates her tale cannot be overstated.

 

“Well,” says Robert, “I suppose that’s the end of it.”

“You _suppose_ that’s the end of _what_ ,” answers Rosalind coolly.

Robert tilts his head, an imitation of her more birdlike gestures. “The entire thought experiment,” he echoes.

Rosalind tuts. “Don’t be silly.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You are.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

“Are you _trying_ to be childish?”

“I’m trying to understand what it is we’re _supposing_.” She wrinkles her nose with distinct displeasure. “Not that I approve of supposition.”

“I suppose you’d prefer a declarative statement.”

“Only if it can be backed up by credible evidence.”

“You’re impossible to please.”

“It was _you_ who set down the ultimatum.”

“And now its terms are satisfied,” says Robert. “Comstock doesn’t exist, has never existed, will never exist. The task is finished.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it full well.” Rosalind fixes her hands together, holding them fast in front of her. “The girl has already complicated matters beyond even her reach.”

“Mistakes were made,” he concedes.

“ _Are_ being made,” she corrects.

“Will have been made,” he amends, and then he sighs again. “But they are hers to fix. It’ll all wash out in the end.”

“Will it,” says Rosalind, crisp and unimpressed. “Like the sins of a man in a river.”

The metaphor is topical; they stand at the riverside where Booker DeWitt has been made no more. This has not _just_ happened, but has happened in simultaneous conjunction with several other events taking place in Columbia, Rapture, and elsewhere. They have many choices of where to manifest; this seems as good a place as any for a conversation.

“We’ve gotten away from my original point,” says Robert with a subtle edge.

“I had rather thought we were getting around to it.”

“What are we to do _now_ ,” he says firmly. He is determined to break them from the rhythm of their endless patter, though this is no simple task. “Surely we can’t go on like this forever.”

“Can’t we?” The question is obviously rhetorical, just as _now_ is only rhetorical. “That is rather the definition of the state we’re in, for all that _forever_ is a needlessly poetic term.”

“Please, don’t be difficult,” he huffs. “You know what I’m getting at.”

“Why _get at_ you point when you can simply arrive at it?” She raises an apple, plucked direct from possibility into actuality, and takes a loud bite. “You wish us to make ourselves mortal again. I’ll say it, if you can’t.”

“My _capacity_ isn’t the problem,” he says rather sullenly. “It is your willingness to make the compromise.”

“Giving up effective godhood is no compromise.” Her apple seems to rapidly lose its appeal, and it happens to pop back out of existence, allowing her to fold her arms. “It is a concession, whole and absolute, from which there would be no stepping back. You would consign us to the same fate as the girl. And _we_ have no guilty consciences left to assuage.”

“I don’t think that’s how guilt works,” muses Robert.

She tilts her chin up at him, looking faintly regal. “You find fault with our work?”

“You don’t?”

“It is complete, more or less as designed—”

“More or _less_ —”

“—and I fail to see the purpose of worrying ourselves over the details now that it is _done_.”

“No, of course you don’t.” Robert says this without any real bite, gazing over the river with a soft, weary exhalation. A moment passes between them, rare and rather remarkable because of it, but he knows Rosalind is thinking, and he knows what she’s about to say.

“This is about him,” she says.

“It’s not _just_ about him.”

“Nevertheless.”

Again, Robert sighs. He can’t seem to get enough of sighing, the most clichéd mark of a weight on one’s mind. Perhaps more like an emotionally overburdened Romantic poet than one might expect of a scientist, but _nevertheless_ indeed.

Rosalind always knew the facts of the matter, knew enough to make this educated assumption at least, because of course she did. She couldn’t very well be _unaware_ of her brother’s feelings, anymore than she could be unaware of one of her limbs. Not a strictly apt analogue, for a variety of reasons, but the point stands: she knew, because she could read the gradual shifts and changes in his voice and face and body language when the question of DeWitt arose, again and again; because she understood, or at least recognized, the subtle transition from a scientific interest to a crisis of conscience to something altogether different. Robert is, was, and always will be a staunch professional, displaying nothing approaching _emotion_ on their encounters with their belligerent subject—nothing that DeWitt would see, at any rate (and he sees very little indeed, having so much else to occupy him at all times). Regardless, it had and has been… troubling. One ought not grow so attached to a subject.

However much Robert’s desire to undo what they had set in motion was motivated by the intricate demands of his heart, it did not ultimately change anything. The object remained the same: to free Elizabeth, to unmake Comstock, to keep the matter from escalating to the point of all that foreseen destruction. That all this would, inevitably, inescapably, arrive at the necessary drowning of the man for which Robert had come, clumsily, unintentionally, to care—it was unfortunate, but Robert’s dedication to the work was always science before sentiment. He would never endanger the matter for a purely selfish reason. Rosalind was always more in the habit of making such concessions than he.

It follows, then, that it would be Rosalind who found cause to stir this proverbial pot. Their work was finished, but she had only followed through on the work because Robert wished it to be done. She did not believe in the exercise, and this she made perfectly clear, but she stood by him, as she had promised always to do when she brought him across worlds to her. She’d imagined that when it was done they would finally have time to themselves. Perhaps they’d explore, crossing time and probability to see how the world would grow. Perhaps they’d find new projects, new causes, new circumstances to influence. The world was their oyster, so the saying went.

But Robert was unhappy. And his unhappiness is, will always be, Rosalind’s truest and perhaps only weakness.

 

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Rene interjects as she blows a loose ring of smoke through the parlor’s increasingly hazy air.

Rosalind digs her fingers into her skirts, displeased at the unwarranted pause in the story. She is mired in its details, so many of them reforming in her mind, smoky and vague and possibly invented from suggestion. There is no way to know for certain. She is reasonably sure she didn’t _live_ this, the conversation went differently when she had it, and yet—she is reasonably sure she _remembers_.

“ _What’s_ ironic?” she says impatiently.

“That it would be his happiness which finally drove you to this point.”

Rosalind feels her chest tighten at what she perceives to be a tremendous insult, but Rene is already carrying them onward.

 

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” says Robert, his arms folded tight, his shoulders hunched as he stands in the guttering light of an exhausted street lamp. The air smells of rain; in the steadily darkening evening the streets already have a sort of deep sheen to them, making them appear as if they are already wet. New York has never been one of their favorite locales, but at least it is quiet in this particular area on this night.

“Then you’ll know exactly how I have felt through every step that led us to this point.” Rosalind utters this lightly, more a joke than a jab. She hands him an umbrella. “Off with you.”

“We stand to risk everything we’ve done,” he points out, refusing to unfold his arms and leaving the umbrella offered between them.

“What’s done is done, will be done, will _always_ have been done,” she insists, and pushes the umbrella to his chest, forcing him to unfurl himself and take it. “There are still options. There are _always_ options. You know this.”

“He might remember,” says Robert uneasily.

“There is nothing we can do to upset his ultimate _role_ in the proceedings,” she continues. “We might mess about a little, but regardless of what we do, he is a sure constant.”

“Then again he might not,” says Robert, doubtfully.

“Without him none of this would have been possible,” she insists, indifferent to his late-stage waffling. “What a quandary—for a man’s unbeing to hinge on his continued existence. His position in reality is protected, because if it is _not_ , the girl will never have existed to unmake him in the first place. A perfect, self-sustaining loop without egress. Now, we simply must make another one—a tangent, if you will, a perfectly controlled roundabout. Have faith, dear brother. Time does have a way of feeding back into itself, after all.”

“Are you certain we can control it?” He gives her a look, an eyebrow raised.

“As certain as I am of anything,” she answers. “In any case, you’ll receive no answers by wasting your opportunity here.” Rosalind gives him a light, jaunty sort of shove. If she is playing up her amusement with the situation, it is for his benefit. “Go on. If he remembers—or if he _doesn’t_ , for that matter—all you need do is charm him with your notorious wit.”

“Notorious, is it,” he mutters.

“Fortunately he’s a very easy man to please,” she replies with a wry smile. “At least, when it comes to giving him what he wants.”

“You do _so_ know how to boost my confidence,” he says, dry as brittle bones. He turns away and stands at the edge of the pool of lamp light, gazing out into the gathering dusk as though afraid.

“Go, brother.” She gives his shoulder an encouraging little pat. “I’ll be near at all times, unless that should become imprudent.”

He scoffs, though does not quite manage a full retort.

“Regardless,” she says, a trifle gentler, “you shan’t stray so far that I won’t be able to find you again.”

“I know,” he says, but he hesitates a little longer before moving out of the light. Having taken these first few steps, he draws a breath and squares his shoulders, feeling marginally emboldened, and he carries on, umbrella at his side, to and round the corner onto the street running perpendicular. There, just as they timed it, stands a man who seems caught at a proverbial crossroads. He stands before a bar, staring up its steps to its dully illuminated interior, the possibility of patronizing this establishment having caught him on his walk home. Home is the place from which he shall shortly step out of this life and into another, setting in motion events which have already been set in motion, which shall always be in motion, round and round like the gears of an eternal clock. It is Booker DeWitt, having turned down his baptism, having _not_ yet been drowned, on the eve of his departure to a confluence of events which will always, always lead back around to his drowning. In every instance, Booker has decided against a drink in the company of others, has left and gone home and left again. This truth is the key which makes it all possible, and it is a truth Robert now seeks to disrupt. Technically, by being here, it has already been disrupted; this is already a version of events distinct from the main. While that self-sustaining self-fulfilling reality continues, now this one lies alongside it, like a duplicated train that gently, peacefully slips its tracks. If all time happens at once, and the Luteces know that it does, then Rosalind’s tangential path is already here, already leading somewhere else, to a somewhere they have not yet explored. Occasionally, they can be bothered to do one thing at a time.

The ins and outs of this matter are difficult to relate. What is of import is that Robert, having adequately steeled himself, approaches the man and catches his attention.

“Mr. DeWitt,” he says simply, having no better alternative.

Booker looks at him, then looks him over, several expressions flashing across his face in quick succession: there is surprise at having been called, distrust of the man doing the calling, an interrogative stare as he visibly struggles to place whether or not and why he knows the man who has intruded upon his space and thoughts; and finally, perhaps horribly, there is recognition.

“I know you,” he says slowly.

“You do,” says Robert. “After a fashion.”

It takes Booker a few moments more before his eyes slit and his hands raise to seize Robert by his lapels, maneuvering him roughly into the brick wall behind him. The umbrella clatters to the ground, Robert’s hands going reflexively to Booker’s wrists, though he does not fight against the grip. He accepts it, calm and willing, because he deserves it. “You took my daughter.”

“Technically, you gave her up,” says Robert, fully aware he is rather at the man’s mercy, and driving him harder to his fixed point of rage might not be the wisest move. But the rage is a comfort, in a way; the recognition, the justified fury, strangely enough it all gives Robert a confidence he didn’t have before. He came here under no delusion that Booker DeWitt owed him any kindness. This, he feels, is the most correct outcome.

Still, it won’t do to encourage violence done to himself, so he adds quickly: “I have an answer to your troubles. Or an assurance that they _have_ been answered. For that I shall have to ask that you let me go.” He holds Booker’s stare for a moment, which is quite an undertaking; the man has an intense gaze, and without Rosalind here to bear it with him, it becomes _personal_ in a way it has never been before.

“Can you get her back?” Booker asks after a moment, his wild wrath already diminishing.

“It is a bit more complicated than that. I’d like to buy you a drink, and then I’d like to show you something.” This is a gamble; it always was a gamble. As with all experiments, gambles must be made. If this one fails, they shall simply try again. Still, Robert feels nervous, even with his strengthened resolve. He knows this is a particularly difficult sell.

To Booker’s credit, after another round of staring, he actually laughs. A strange, disconcerting bark of one, but a laugh nonetheless. He loosens his grip some. “ _You_ want to buy me a drink,” he says.

“Very much so.”

Booker seems to be weighing his options, but in Robert’s now-extensive experience with the man, indecision never lasts long. For a man whose very existence is so tied up in superposition, he is quite direct. In all variations.

“All right, you fancy little shit,” he says with a tone that borders on bemused. He releases Robert, even makes a show of brushing him off, like this whole situation is suddenly very funny to him. This is a man with little left to live for, who seizes all opportunities as they come. A slight turn for the manic is hardly a surprise. Robert bends down to recover his umbrella, and when he straightens back up he finds Booker casually, calmly lighting a cigarette. He blows smoke in Robert’s face and says, “Knock yourself out.”

 

The process is arduous.

First, the drink. By the end of their stay, Robert has paid for no less than six drams of the most expensive rye whiskey in the place. He tries to put a stop to it after the fourth, but Booker is well past persuasion at this point. Robert himself manages to sip but the one glass of Malbec throughout the evening. The whiskey increases Booker’s pliability and willingness to entertain the details of what Robert is telling him; however it decreases his ability to retain said details, therefore its efficacy as a conversational aid is negligible.

Second, the understanding itself. Robert has repeatedly gone over what he planned to say, painstakingly constructing an explanation as clear and simplified as he could muster, but it still isn’t enough, and he still finds himself mired in a story that is simply beyond Booker’s willingness or capacity to accept. He struggles to explain the identity of Comstock, the fate of Elizabeth, and his and Rosalind’s own role in the proceedings, but Booker can’t stop chuckling about the very idea of a floating city. He seems to even have expunged from his memory the tear _he saw_ , through which his infant daughter was wrenched from his grasp, resisting any and all references to the idea of a window into another world. Even without putting his mind through the gauntlet of transference, he restructures his memory, causes himself to forget. The man is a nuisance, as ever; a handsome, incredulous nuisance.

For Booker, it doesn’t seem to matter. When Robert finally gives up and suggests they move on to the next stage, to _showing_ him what he has to show, Booker agrees affably. He even throws an arm around Robert’s narrow shoulders as he staggers back out into the street. It is raining, as anticipated; Robert raises and opens the umbrella to shield them both, and Booker seems to find that funny as well. His attitude is confounding. It’s as though the moment the prospect of a free drink entered the picture, all hope of resolution regarding his absent daughter was abandoned. Sustaining his anger seems to have not been worth it. He is tired, his depression intense and all-consuming, such that not even the presence of the man he blames is enough to keep him engaged.

“If all you wanted to do was _show_ me something we could’ve stayed at the bar,” he slurs, still leaning heavily on Robert, who can barely take the extra weight. “They got rooms.”

“Mr. DeWitt,” says Robert, struggling to control the flush that is presently spreading up the back of his neck and blooming on his cheeks. “I will remind you that this is about the matter of your _daughter_.”

“She’s gone.” He grunts as though irritated Robert has reminded him, when this whole bloody evening has been about her. “Look, Lutece, is it? It’s a nice story you been tryin’ to sell me. Floating city. Some other me. Reunion with her. All that. Just give it a rest, all right? I’m past wishing I’d done it different. No matter how hard I wish for it, I can’t change the past. You cleared my debts like you said you would, came back, faced me down like a man, and got me good and drunk on your dime. Let’s not ruin the moment, all right? You wanna assuage your guilt all night, I got a couple suggestions.”

“It is _not_ a story, Mr. DeWitt,” he insists, his tone reaching a slightly higher-than-normal pitch in his frustration. He hadn’t known exactly how Booker would take to his unseemly attraction, and that hadn’t been the point to start. That would come later, if it would come at all; after some equal ground was established, after he was certain Booker could move past the unpleasant origin of their association. All he’s really known about the man’s private life is that he was once married. The discovery that he is, in fact, not only open to Robert’s potential advances but beating him to the entire punch of it, is utterly maddening. “And you _can_ change the past.”

“Then prove it.” Booker leans a little harder into him, nearly unbalancing him. His breath is hot and overwhelmingly alcoholic. “Stop talking, and _change_ it.”

“That’s what I keep trying to tell you,” says Robert. They come around the corner, and the rain is coming down hard enough that their visibility is poor, but he can still make out the flicker of that street lamp. He angles them toward it, steering the bulk of his companion with some effort. “It has already been changed. That is what I’m going to show you.”

Rosalind is waiting for him, standing perfectly still beneath her own umbrella. She smirks at the sight of them.

“That seems to have gone about as well as expected,” she remarks.

“Don’t get cute,” Robert grumbles.

“Holy shit, there’s two of you,” says Booker.

“Indeed,” says Rosalind cheerfully, and without any fanfare or bother, she opens a tear in the wall behind her. Booker’s breath stutters loudly in Robert’s ear and his sagging weight immediately goes rigid. Robert wonders how much of it is objective shock and how much is an unwelcome surge of memory. Rosalind throws them a winning smile—a show-off to the last—and says, “Do hold tight, Mr. DeWitt. The transition will be difficult.”

 

The danger was always losing Booker entirely. They knew they could not expect him to handle this transition any better than he did every other time, and they could not readily predict what the effect would be on his memory or his faculties.

As they step through the tear, it becomes immediately apparent to Booker that they are somewhere _different_. There is neither rain nor dusk, for one thing; instead there is early morning sunlight streaming through the windows, for they are now indoors. They have arrived in the sitting room of the little house the Luteces have acquired for this endeavor. The moment the gap closes behind them, Booker half-collapses, leaving Robert to struggle against gravity with his not-insignificant weight. Rosalind closes her umbrella with a smart snap, tossing it to a nearby armchair and turning to assist her brother. Together they lay the man down on the floor as gently as they can. He is hemorrhaging a great deal, and Robert mutters unintelligible frettings under his breath as he attempts to stop the flow with his handkerchief. Booker is not quite unconscious, his head lolling senselessly on the floor, his eyes rolling back slightly. His muscles are tightening, limbs tensing visibly, back arched under the stress.

“It’s a seizure,” Robert says tersely. Rosalind’s response is immediate; she gets to her feet and begins pushing furniture back, out of range lest he hurt himself, should his movements become more violent. Robert shifts closer, lifting Booker’s head to cradle it carefully in his lap, reaching out with one hand to undo his collar and loosen his tie with quick, deft motions. This done, he rests one hand in Booker’s hair and continually wipes blood away from his face, waiting anxiously for the fit to pass.

It is a very tense few moments, but eventually the seizing subsides, and Booker’s body becomes limp, though he still trembles slightly, and he still bleeds. Over and over he moans the name of his daughter, _Anna_ , just as he often did before. Robert takes this as an ill omen. If this is bad, if it is truly bad, there may be nothing to do. Transfusion will not be a possibility this time.

“Music,” Robert snaps.

It is unlike him to be so curt, but Rosalind does not balk at it, nor does she hesitate. She turns at once toward the phonograph and selects something to play. When she did this for Robert, she relied heavily on music of string orchestras. The fluid, keening tones of violins and the resolute warmth of cellos were the bedrock for Robert to rebuild himself in this new world. For Booker, she selects something far more suitable to his particularity: the phonograph crackles to life and the gently rolling lilt of classical guitar fills the room. Music from Booker’s world; likely Rosalind chose it for their library with this exact purpose in mind.

It is several minutes more before Booker responds to it. Finally his eyes flutter shut and he begins to relax, his head resting heavily in Robert’s lap. The blood flow seems to be slowing as well, mercifully. Robert continues to monitor the situation, but it seems the man is stabilizing. They are lucky. But this, he knows, was hardly the most difficult step.

“Elizabeth,” Booker whispers, as if out of a dream.

Robert looks up at Rosalind, who breathes out and offers him a small, optimistic smile.

 

Rene is silent for a few moments, taking the time to finish her cigarette, then gently putting the butt out in an ashtray that has been left on the sofa beside her.

Rosalind can be patient, but the prolonged silence is grating, and eventually she leans forward. “Are you telling you made a _duplicate_ Booker DeWitt?”

“A tangential Booker DeWitt. Yes.” Rene looks at her, tired eyes scanning over her slowly. “It was the only option.”

“And this house, all of it— _you_ arranged this.” Rosalind sits back again, struggling to digest this information. “You arranged it… _for_ him.”

Rene looks away, seeming lost in thought, seeming almost apathetic. “Technically, _we_ arranged it.”

Rosalind stares at her, dismayed by her nonchalance for reasons that are difficult to parse. “I don’t understand _why_.”

“Of course you do.” Rene’s eyes flash back to her. “Yes, you _do_ , Rosalind. I have already explained it, and you could have understood it even without me. That is not the mystery here. You _know_.”

Rosalind is silent, somewhat cowed by her counterpart’s suddenly stern tone. It is true, not a point she can argue against. If she were interested in pressing the issue, she might redirect the question—not a _why_ , when the answer is always, _always_ ‘for Robert,’ but rather a why _not_. If granting Robert the chance at the relationship he desired were the intention, why not complete the set? Why not grant him mortality as well?

She cannot ask it aloud, however. She fears the answer—better yet, fears that she already knows _that_ , as well.

“Please,” she says quietly, “continue.”


	4. the untold want

Booker sleeps through the day, and Robert insists on waiting at his bedside. It would be no small matter to jump ahead to the point at which Booker awakens, but there is a certain novelty to taking the old-fashioned way. While he waits, Rosalind busies herself about the house, sorting through their belongings, arranging furniture, making lists of what they yet need. There is still much work to do. They found the property after only a little bit of searching—a lone coastal farmhouse long since abandoned, with not even a barn to go with it. It was little trouble to purchase the property from the bank that had once seized it. Fixing it up, getting it in working condition, was another matter. Both Luteces are quite capable, talented at building, fixing, and making things work, but all their resources had to be gained elsewhere. Time being no object, it instead took no an incredible amount of coordination to collect all they needed and desired. They had to select the right moments and methods to remove certain artifacts from their old lives and reappropriate them all here. Books, music, appliances, and necessities were quite easy; plumbing and power took some actual physical labor, but was by no means impossible. It was their collected work that proved bothersome. It was achieved, eventually, with a combination of copying their own notes, recreating old proofs, and outright theft.

Moving the Contraption was nothing short of a miracle.

 

“Yes, how _was_ that accomplished?” Rosalind asks, unable to sit on her curiosity. “I’ve been wondering.”

“Twice now you’ve interrupted.” In the interim, Rene had fixed herself a tall glass of mostly gin and a bit of soda, offering one to Rosalind, who declined. She sips it alone, indifferently, gazing elsewhere. “Just for that, I shan’t tell you.”

Rosalind supposes she ought to scowl at the petty little punishment, which befits a naughty schoolchild and not one’s own doppelgänger, but she finds she doesn’t have the energy for more irritation. Instead she scoffs and says haughtily, “As if I couldn’t figure it out.”

“You _didn’t_ figure it out; Robert did.” Rene smiles, her eyes sliding back to her counterpart. “If you’re good perhaps I’ll tell you later.”

Rosalind raises her eyebrows at that rather unexpected little remark. There is a certain underside to it, a subtle suggestion which catches her off guard, but which ultimately doesn’t surprise her in the least. Neither does she find it objectionable; she only takes a moment to recover herself, and then smiles right back. “When have you ever known us to be _good_?”

“Quite right.” Rene shrugs idly and takes another long sip of her drink. “I suppose I was thinking of him.”

And just like that, coy curiosity is flushed out by dread. Dread has been largely unavoidable during the telling of the story; it is only a matter of time before they come to the heart of it, the unspeakable question of _what happened to Robert_. Deflecting this uneasiness with a little banter seems just the thing, but only now does she see what that banter _is_ to Rene, who is without Robert, who _has been_ without Robert—why and for how long remains to be answered. Chatting with herself is an opportunity to get close to having Robert back, even if it is not the same.

“Perhaps I’ll see if I can’t follow his example, then,” says Rosalind after a moment, when it seems Rene is too lost in thought to continue.

“Oh, pray, don’t.” Rene laughs it off and gives her drink a little stir. “It is wonderful to meet oneself—truly, the _self_ , who I used to be. I would not trade that for anything, any more than I would have traded _him_.”

Rosalind sits back a little, not sure what to do with that rather ominous compliment. “You know,” she says, “I think I _will_ have a drink. A little easier on the gin, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Rene sets her drink aside and gets up, moving to the liquor cabinet, which has been shoved into the corner beside the piano, which is itself trapped behind the sofa. Honestly, the state of this room. A little sad to observe while hearing the tale of putting it in order.

“It’s just as well you interjected; I had been rather getting away from my point.” Rosalind watches as Rene pours her, still, altogether too much gin. “The matter at hand is still Booker. He didn’t wake until sun-up the next day, and Robert, the bloody romantic, waited through every inch of it. I can’t tell you _all_ of what was said when Booker awoke—I wasn’t there, chose not to pry, Robert did not tell me much. For that, you’d have to ask Booker. I doubt he’d tell it very well.” She adds tonic to the glass, gives it a single stir, and carries it back over to Rosalind, who accepts it dubiously.

Recovering her seat, Rene says, “I just know it was a turning point, for both of them. And it brought about circumstances for which we weren’t truly prepared.”

“Tell me what you can,” Rosalind entreats, giving her drink a cautious sip.

///

“Please, Mr. DeWitt,” says Robert quietly, for the second time.

They have moved themselves to the kitchen, and are now seated opposite the little table, each with tea, which Robert sips intermittently, and Booker has yet to touch.

Booker has been avoiding his eyes, his manner having shifted rapidly from all that disarming comfort he’d displayed in the cellar to _this_ , a man feeling keenly out of his depth. He was right, he _doesn’t_ tell the story well, but with each fumbling step in the attempt to recount matters, a little more has filled into Robert’s memory, until he has nearly the whole of it flooding over him, overwhelming him into slackjawed silence. Appropriating the house— _this_ house—finding Booker, creating a tangential version of him. It all feels familiar, like something he _would_ do, perhaps has planned to do, but has not actually _done_. The experience is disorienting.

Now, though, Booker has grown less willing to continue, as though he is troubled by it, which only makes it that much more tantalizing.

“It’s just,” says Booker, fidgeting slightly, “I can’t remember the exact words you used. I won’t tell it right.”

“I’ll remember,” says Robert. “I’m starting to. But it only comes back as you explain. Mr. DeWitt—I need your help.”

Booker gives him an odd look, one Robert has trouble parsing until he speaks: “You can call me Booker, you know.”

He almost flinches at the implied intimacy of the suggestion. It shouldn’t surprise him—none of it should. He knows himself, understands the underlying implications of having plucked Booker out of his life and giving him a new space to inhabit. He remembers his own wants, and the discomfort of those wants tangling together with the intention to give Booker space. But it’s jumbled, like remembering a dream by fragments and sensations. There is something _here_ , something critical he can’t remember and isn’t ready to accept. He needs to know what it is, to confirm the reality of it before his own hope strangles him. He doesn’t trust hope or even supposition, not when it’s something so deep and close to his heart.

Booker sighs heavily. “All right,” he says. “I’ll try.”

 

Robert wonders if he could have contrived to sleep through some of it. Sleep isn’t _impossible_ , but it is quite unnecessary, and rather a difficult thing to trick oneself into doing when one doesn’t need it. Still, it would be better than sitting and consciously doing _nothing_ for so many consecutive hours. It is a tedious business, and he is growing restless, if not tired, by the time Booker finally stirs.

Robert sits forward at once, eager but reminding himself not to draw too close in case the man is jumpy. “Mr. DeWitt,” he says softly.

Booker stretches and rubs at his eyes for a groggy moment before squinting up at Robert. Somehow, though it has been a full day since he was drunk (and they _have_ been taking steps to hydrate him), he manages to appear hung over.

“Lutece,” he says finally. He starts to sit up, leaning his weight on his elbows.

“Be careful,” says Robert, drawing an unimpressed side-eye from the man. “You took quite a spill.”

“Yeah, I remember. Kind of.” Booker sits all the way up, braced back against the headboard, and groans as he massages the heel of his hand against the ridge of his brow. After a moment he lowers his hand and looks around, sparing the window a long glance, no doubt taking in the earthly horizon. Then he turns back to Robert. “Where am I?”

Robert sits back, giving him a bit more space. “A house in the middle of nowhere,” he says bluntly. “We are on the coast of Maine.” Not so far from where they originally took Booker to sea, though he doesn’t see fit to mention that. That lighthouse can’t be seen from here, isn’t particularly accessible. Not without a long, long row. “It is… ours. Rosalind’s and mine.”

It is difficult to explain _why_ the house. To try and do so now would involve some confessions Robert is not ready to give. In the absence of any reply from Booker, who simply looks bewildered, Robert clears his throat and asks, “What do you remember?”

Booker rubs his hands over his face and then lays them down in his lap, gazing dully at them. He turns the right one palm-down after a moment and stares at the brand he carved into himself. “I…” he says with a faint tone of amazement. “I remember everything.” He looks up at Robert. “How—how is that possible? I remember _dying_.” He touches his upper lip absently, but no more blood comes. A good sign. “Elizabeth… drowning me in the river,” he murmurs. “That… that wasn’t _my_ life. That hasn’t happened to me. Jesus Christ.” He raises his hands to his head, gripping a little tighter than he ought. “What is going on?”

“You’re remembering what else you experienced in this world,” says Robert. There were several possibilities for how this was going to play out. The notion that memories not belonging to this iteration of Booker would be filled in, granted to him simply as reward or curse for his presence here, was a distant theory. There is not much rhyme or reason to the way memories synchronize or vanish, it seems, at least nothing they’ve put down credibly on paper. But it was a possibility. It makes some things easier. It makes others more complicated. “All that has happened to you in your future, has happened _here_ , in this world’s past. I know it’s difficult, but if it helps any, you _are_ recovering remarkably well. The confusion can be… traumatic.”

“No shit.” Booker rubs roughly at the bridge of his nose and looks again at Robert. “Why did you… Did you stop all of that from happening?”

“No.” Robert folds his hands tightly in his lap. “It _has_ happened. It is still happening. It will always be happening.”

“Then I’m dead here. I’m meant to be dead. Right?”

“Technically you never existed to come here at all, but it shakes out about the same.”

Booker huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “I thought that was against the rules or something.”

“Rules can be bent, Mr. DeWitt.” Robert shifts in his seat. It is a surprising struggle not to fidget outright. “We’ve certainly bent them often enough.”

“That don’t answer the question of what I’m _doing_ here.” Again, Booker fixes Robert with a hard look, one Robert finds marginally uncomfortable, but he forces himself not to look away. “What _am_ I doing here, Lutece?”

It is a fair question. One Robert had expected and prepared for, though he almost wouldn’t know it from how uneasy it still makes him. He draws a long breath and says, “It was a calculated risk, bringing you here, to where you do not belong,” he says. “It was a risk we decided to take because we—because _I_ felt you were owed more than you got.”

“More than I _got_?” Booker’s stare becomes outright incredulous. “The hell are you talking about?”

“You remember all of it, yes?” Robert resists the urge to get up and pace, keeping himself at a fixed point in more ways than one. “Elizabeth being your daughter Anna—Comstock being _you_. We took her from you for _him_. It ruined you, Mr. DeWitt.”

“ _I’m_ the one who sold her,” he growls.

“You were in a position where you felt you had no choice. We took advantage.” Robert has not spoken much of this aloud before. Rosalind does not so much believe in wallowing in guilt, and so there is no one with whom to discuss it. In some ways, it is as much a relief as a difficulty. “We took her with no regard to your wellbeing—means that justified our ends. We only recognized it as a mistake when Comstock turned on us, and when we saw the full consequences that having Elizabeth in this world would bring to bear. In fixing our mistake, we used you again, and the resolution to it all was your inescapable death. We broke you to make a mistake, and we broke you again to fix it. Do you understand?”

“I understand perfectly well,” says Booker, sounding rather cold, which is to be expected. “And now you think you’re fixing… what? I thought you had it all wrapped up the way it was meant to go.”

“ _Meant_ to—you don’t understand.” Robert shakes his head, emboldened to speak a little more emphatically. “What happened to you was _wrong_ , Mr. DeWitt. It all fed back into itself, over and over, there was no way to—we can’t right our mistakes, but I can at least give you an opportunity that was stripped from you.”

“Yeah?” Booker looks around himself and spots a few of his belongings on the nightstand. He takes his cigarettes and his lighter and sets himself up with a smoke, casual as can be. “And what opportunity is that?”

“To _live_ ,” says Robert plainly.

Booker snorts out a laugh. “Live where. Here?” He flicks his lighter closed and takes a long drag on the cigarette. “Give me a house in the middle of nowhere in a world where I ain’t even supposed to exist, and just call it even, is that it?”

Robert opens his mouth and shuts it again, momentarily feeling out of his depth. Oh dear, he hasn’t explained this well at all. “That isn’t quite—”

“You keep talking about _your_ mistakes,” Booker continues, smoking and eyeing Robert with a strange sort of tranquility. “They were _my_ mistakes, Lutece. I’m the one who became Comstock, just as much as I’m the one who gave up my daughter. In the end I owned those mistakes. I gave myself up to make it right. I _chose_ that outcome. Or at least I accepted it.” He stares at Robert for a long time before looking away, breathing smoke into the room. “You don’t get to undo that because it wasn’t to your liking.”

“It hasn’t been _undone_ ,” says Robert stiffly. He shouldn’t be surprised by this turn. Booker is every bit a fatalist as Rosalind, really. “And it is only due to us that any of it was possible.”

“Last night you said you wanted to show me something,” says Booker. “All you wanted to do was abduct me.”

Honestly. The man is so very difficult. “We created a subverted variation of events wherein you could be at peace knowing that your work was done, had been done successfully, without having to be eradicated for it,” he says with a touch of impatience. “I did not know what would happen when we brought you here. We might have had to show you, actually _show_ you what happened. The memories might have filled in on their own—as they did.”

“And I might have died. Again.”

“It _is_ possible to brings people across universes without killing them,” says Robert. “It was done to me.”

“You signed up for it, I bet.”

“I did not mean this to be an _abduction_ ,” says Robert, now floundering in the face of stubborn refusal to see his perspective. It’s never like this with Rosalind. He’s terribly out of practice.

“No, you just thought you were picking up a doomed stray and giving him the nice gift of an easy retirement.” Booker chuckles to himself as he smokes. “I get it.”

“I don’t think you do,” says Robert, frowning his skepticism.

“Here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius.” Booker doesn’t say this unkindly; in fact he’s still smiling, which is unnerving. Robert only feels progressively lost at sea as this goes on. “And _this_ was the best you could come up with?”

“There was no other way,” says Robert softly, just shy of plaintive.

“I’m not talkin’ about that. What you’ve done here. I’m talkin’ about your excuses for it.”

“My—”

Booker looks him dead in the eye. “What’s your interest in me, Lutece?”

The question runs Robert aground and leaves him stammering without recourse. It is foolish to be so caught off guard, and he knows it. The question is astute, apt, and worth asking. If Booker remembers any of his drunken conversation outside the bar, and Robert suspects that he does, this is only an appropriate followup in the light of sobriety. For his part, Robert hadn’t expected it so bluntly or so soon.

“My… interest?” he ventures, a pathetically transparent stalling tactic.

Booker laughs him off, and starts pushing the bedsheets back, swinging his legs around so he’s sitting on the edge of the mattress, leaning rather closer than Robert would have expected. “Don’t play me for stupid,” he says. “I may not be some fancy scientist, but I have been a Pinkerton and a detective.” His eyes flick up and down Robert for a moment, and Robert feels a certain quickening of his pulse. Booker’s eyes settle slowly back on his, considering him a moment. “I know a thing or two about reading a man.”

“Mr. DeWitt, I—” Robert’s instincts are to put distance between them, but he’s rather boxed in here, Booker seated too close for him to get up from his chair without brushing the man’s knees, and contact of _any_ kind seems a bridge too far right now. “My _interest_ is not—it, it is purely scientific—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Lutece,” says Booker. “You brought me here for you.”

“No, I—” Robert shifts again in his chair, though it comes out rather more like a squirm. “I brought you here in an attempt to make up for what I—for what _we’ve_ done to you.”

“And you thought I might be appreciative.”

“ _No_ ,” says Robert sharply, aghast. “It isn’t like that, Mr. DeWitt, it—I never presumed—what I’ve told you is _genuine_ , sir, and I do not expect anything in return from you for it. This is not transactional, and _my own interest_ is a negligible element in the proceedings.”

“Negligible,” echoes Booker like he doesn’t believe it, his eyes still flitting about the region of Robert’s face as he smokes.

“I…” Desperate to avoid eye contact, Robert’s eyes fall on the hand holding the cigarette, on the ring Booker still wears. He swallows, struggling to bring himself back down. “I know you were married, Mr. DeWitt, I never had any designs of—”

“You think Annabelle was the only person I ever had eyes for?” Booker abruptly puts the cigarette out in his own hand, the sure pain of it not seeming to bother him, and flicks the butt carelessly to the floor. “You think I might have a problem with this on account of my late wife?”

“I don’t know _what_ I thought, Mr. DeWitt,” Robert admits. “I did not consider it in such specificity. We know very little about each other, I had rather hoped we could establish a greater understanding before getting into such—base topics.”

“You’re talkin’ like you want us to be friends, which I don’t make.” Booker leans in before Robert has time to react and stops him from pulling away with a hand on his collar, not gripping tight, just a loose hold on the fabric. An offer, perhaps, or a promise, or a threat. He speaks in a husky whisper, so close now that Robert can feel his breath on his lips. “But I have been known to lie with men. I’ll take all sorts, it doesn’t matter to me. A man in my position can’t afford to be choosy.”

Robert can scarcely breathe. He hasn’t felt so—so petrified, so human, so _alive_ since long before the event of their botched death. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, with his hands, his eyes, anything. His lips part to take in shallow breaths, his gaze darting quickly from Booker’s eyes to his mouth to his hands. He hasn’t had to struggle this much to speak for as long as he can remember.

Booker doesn’t give him time to find the words. “This what you wanted, Lutece?”

For an unbearably long moment, long in the way moments _never are_ for Robert anymore, long in that it lasts its full course with no known escape, Booker holds Robert there and studies him, seemingly indifferent to his trembling or his quickened breath; he lets his eyes rest heavily on Robert’s mouth and stretches out one finger to brush slowly along the line of his jaw. Then, with all the matter-of-fact abruptness of a man who has just remembered he left something on the stove, Booker drops his gaze elsewhere, lets him go, and pulls away. He shifts to the foot of the bed, crosses his legs, and lights up another cigarette.

Robert sits very still, staring into the space Booker had just been inhabiting, now a clear line of sight through the window to the sea, suffering the distinct sensation of having been shipwrecked.

“So,” says Booker, taking a quick drag and letting his glance pass around the room. “How do I go back?”

Robert is not ready to return to conversation as usual, and it takes him several extra seconds to right his breathing and turn, quite stiffly, to look at Booker. Booker is set on smoking, his focus fixed on the cigarette. His behavior betrays no tension or discomfort, as though nothing has happened at all.

“…Back?” says Robert eventually, turning more fully toward him. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“ _Back_ , back to New York, back to my life.” Booker articulates with brutal, impatient gestures, the cigarette leaving a fading smoke trail in the sunlit air. “Or did you think I was keen on this whole situation you’ve cooked up?”

Robert watches him cautiously, speaks just as cautiously, uttering every word with extreme care: “There is no going back, Mr. DeWitt.”

This, finally, breaks through Booker’s armor of indifference. He turns sharply, his eyes flashing so dark that Robert actually flinches.

“Excuse me?” he says, threateningly quiet.

“You cannot go back.” Robert swallows, his throat dry, more afraid now than he was when Booker had him against the wall in the street. His explanation grows only more uneven and rapid-paced the longer Booker goes on staring and not speaking. “That is not your life anymore. You know _everything_ that happens to you, that would have happened. You cannot expect to fulfill it all in the correct way. We cannot simply slot you back into the life any more than, than you could reattach a leaf plucked from a tree. _This_ is the direction your life has taken, do you understand? This is what is _happening_ , now. You cannot go back to what happened to you in a different life.”

“You took me out with no way to put me back,” says Booker, his voice low and thick. He gets to his feet, towering over Robert, and Robert is quick to rise as well, knocking the chair over in his haste.

“Once a moment is altered, it _remains_ altered,” says Robert a bit desperately. He isn’t entirely sure _why_ he is so afraid—it’s not as if Booker can truly hurt him, even if he has a mind to; he and Rosalind are immune to such trifles now, after all—but reason or no, it has become _critical_ that he make Booker understand. “We were there, it had already changed, it would not—”

“You _made the decision_ to change it,” says Booker, raising his voice now, and he takes a step toward Robert, forcing Robert to take a step back. “Right? I don’t get all this other-worlds crap but I’ve got that down, don’t I.”

“Mr. DeWitt—”

Booker takes another step forward, and Robert finds himself against a wall once again. Rosalind is elsewhere in the house, it would be very simple to summon her, but for reasons that are somewhat esoteric to him, he doesn’t.

“I know,” says Booker, edging into his personal space without touching him. “You thought you were doing me a favor. You felt _bad_ for what you did to me, because you got soft, decided you liked the look of me, right? Wanted to do something nice for me so I might be amenable. Men stupider than you have been pulling this move since they knew how to fuck, but I don’t think anyone but you has made such a goddamn cock-up of it.”

“I—I wanted to—” says Robert, flushed again and this time not from desire.

“I don’t give a shit what you wanted to do, Lutece,” says Booker coldly. “I’ll tell you what you _did_ do: you took me away from seeing my daughter again. You took her from me, and now you’ve taken her again. Did you think about _that_?”

Robert feels the tension slipping from his muscles, feels his jaw slacken. No, is the answer. No, he did not think about that.

“You’ve trapped me here in this sorry little house in the middle of godforsaken fucking nowhere with nothing but memories from _some other Booker’s life_. Those aren’t mine. I didn’t get to live that. I didn’t get to see her. Now you’re telling me I never will.” Booker pulls away from him, pacing across the room, raking a hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Lutece. Take it from me, all right? Next time you get it in your head that you want to fix your mistakes, _don’t_.”

“Mr. DeWi—Booker,” says Robert quietly, shakily. “I—I’m so sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Booker turns to face him again. “That’s it?”

Robert is silent. He stares at the floor, feeling nothing now but overwhelming, crushing shame.

“You should have left me to drown in the damn river,” says Booker, some of the anger leaving him now; now he mostly sounds tired. “It’s all I ever deserved.”

At this, Robert finds his voice again; he looks at Booker in startled disbelief for a moment, then says, “No, it isn’t.”

Booker laughs unkindly, shaking his head. “What, because you decided I was worth saving? Do me a favor, Lutece—don’t pretend you know a damn thing about me.”

Robert doesn’t answer, but meets his gaze, staring him down. For a moment Booker just regards him with mild interest, as though the appearance of a backbone has made him worth the conversation; then he comes back a little closer.

“You wanna know something about me?” he says, that tiredness now mixing with new, manic energy; not quite anger, but something else. “When I was sixteen I helped murder hundreds of my own people at Wounded Knee. I was brutal. I took more of them than anyone. Women, children, it didn’t matter. I’m part Sioux. Did you know that?” He smirks coldly. “Sergeant called me out for it in front of the company, so I did everything in my bodily power to prove I wasn’t one of them. I murdered them, mutilated their bodies, burned down their homes, and got called a hero for it.”

Again, Robert does not answer him. He stands up straighter now, holding his gaze steady, his mouth set in a firm line.

Such stoic silence only seems to incite Booker further. “Then I became a Pinkerton. I broke people who were just fighting for food, for the right to survive. I ruined lives. I rained down destruction, I did it willingly and I did it well.” He takes another step forward, but this time Robert shows no sign of intimidation. “I did so many miserable things before you even came into my life, Lutece. I’ve been a monster long before Columbia. So don’t tell me what I deserve.”

With this, he turns away again, making slowly for the door.

Robert draws a breath, his hands now clasped firmly behind his back. “I know who you are, Booker DeWitt.”

Booker stops at the threshold, though he keeps his back turned.

“Rosalind and I exist everywhere in time and space,” Robert continues. “Do you believe we didn’t seek alternatives? Do you presume that we did not explore every inch of your life, looking for some other way to undo what we did to you? You wish to know what my _interest_ is? It isn’t just the _look_ of you, as you put it. I’ve seen the boy who was pressured and bullied and abused into enacting violence. I’ve seen the man he became, who believed he was numb inside, conditioned to think himself skilled only at brutality. The sorrow, the regret, all of it. That you had the wherewithal to turn aside a false escape, the cheap exit that would have made you into a different man entirely. And I’ve seen you since; I’ve seen who you are in between all the death that surrounds you. I’ve seen a man capable of nobility, and tenderness, and compassion, who nevertheless believes himself capable only of monstrosity. I’ve come to care for you because I feel that I _know_ you; I can see a part of you that you have forgotten how to see. I know that is not fair to you, and I would never ask anything of you which you were not prepared to give; this is not _why_ you are here. But since you have sussed it out, _yes_ , that is my interest in you.”

He draws a breath, steeling himself. It is overwhelming to say so much at once, actually letting himself be _seen_.

“That you have done monstrous things does not make you a monster, DeWitt,” he says, a bit softer. “It does not mean you deserve to drown for other men’s missteps. _That_ is why I brought you here.”

Through all this, Booker does not move, his shoulders hunched, his back telling little of his feelings on this diatribe. It is a long moment indeed before he finally moves, finally turns around to rest his eyes on Robert. Again he seems tired, even moreso than before. Bone weary, as though Robert’s words have physically worn him down.

“A monster _is_ someone who does monstrous things,” he says.

“A monster is someone who does monstrous things and feels no remorse,” replies Robert. “Let me be clear: I am not excusing what you have done. I do not think what you did at that massacre deserves forgiveness; even if I did, it is not my place to forgive you, not for any of it. But I will not ignore the effort you put into unmaking yourself, or how strongly you believe the world is better off without you.” He draws another breath, only slightly shaky. “I believe a man so willing to own his mistakes deserves a chance to improve himself, don’t you? And not simply through an endless cycle of martyrdom.”

“You’re a goddamn romantic,” says Booker with a huff.

“So my sister has informed me.”

Booker stares at him for a while longer, then glances off, nodding distractedly to himself. “I think Elizabeth would be better off without me, to be honest,” he says. “I’m nothing but trouble for her, no matter what name I’m using.”

“Technically, she is _not_ without you; you are without her,” says Robert. “But in any case, I doubt very much that she would agree.”

He expects Booker to argue, but no argument comes. The fight seems to have been drained out of him. Robert wonders if he took things too far, and clears his throat awkwardly as he adds, “If it helps any—and I know it might not—you don’t have to stay _here_.” Booker looks at him but says nothing, so he continues: “You can’t go to Columbia, but you can go anywhere else. We could even take you to another world, if you like. Help set you up with a new identity. Again. I know it isn’t enough, but… I did not wish to cause you more pain, Mr. DeWitt. I will do everything in my power to right things for you. Whatever it takes.”

Booker fidgets idly with his cigarette, seeming to consider this offer, before he smirks again and says, “Thought I just told you to stop trying to do that.”

“Yes, well.” Robert lifts a shoulder in a lukewarm half-shrug. “Old habits, as they say.”

“Hah,” Booker grunts, more or less appreciatively. “You got a name, Lutece?”

This catches Robert wholly off guard, and his composure slips again. “Sorry?”

“I know I’ve probably heard it once or twice, but to be honest, I never paid that much attention to either of you.” At Robert’s continued bewildered silence, Booker shrugs and says, “Well, you called me Booker, I figure it’s only fair.”

Ah, yes. The name had rather slipped out. Robert hadn’t intended it to signify anything. But there is no point in turning down what seems to be a sort of olive branch, so he smiles very faintly and says, “It’s Robert.”

“Robert. Well.” Booker dallies for a moment, looking about the room as though it will help him find something to say, and when he comes up empty, he lifts his cigarette in a rather mocking imitation of a toast. “I’d say ‘nice to meet you,’ but, uh.”

“I’m sure I’d be charmed,” says Robert, not wholly certain what is happening here, if this is a farewell, or a flirtation, or simply the desperately awkward situation it appears to be.

Booker turns away but doesn’t quite leave yet. “I think I’ll stick around for the time being,” he says, “if only ‘cause I don’t much feel like walking through however many miles of farmland you put us away from civilization.”

“Ah,” says Robert, faltering a little. “Yes. Right.”

Booker walks out before he can think of anything more to say.

 

For the first week of Booker’s habitation, he sticks close to Rosalind, assisting her in work around the house. She indulges him and even implies that his help is appreciated—an effort Robert knows to be largely disingenuous and entirely for his benefit. Rosalind has never been one to suffer the assistance of men less qualified than herself—which, to her, includes all of them (save for Robert, of course). But Booker’s unacknowledged embargo on further conversation with Robert holds firm, and moreover he considers himself handy and desires to make himself useful if he is to be trapped in this purgatorial dwelling. So Rosalind permits it, for a time.

By the end of the week, however, she has fully lost patience with this arrangement, and abruptly declares that the three of them will spend the evening drinking in the sitting room. This is quite the concession for her, and Robert knows it. She does not enjoy drinking in the company of anyone but him; she does not enjoy the company of anyone but him _period_. She does not take his pleasure in _spending_ time in a linear fashion, experiencing the actual drudgery of an evening passing. But to her, the situation has grown dire.

“What, exactly, are you hoping to accomplish?” he asks her moodily as she piles books into his arms. Their collection is never quite finished; always more to be poached from various libraries belonging to rich men who don’t bother to read them.

“I do not understand your affection for the man in the slightest,” says Rosalind as she tosses another book on the growing stack. “But your pining from afar has gone on long enough. DeWitt is _obviously_ amenable, and if he weren’t so childishly stubborn he would do something about it himself. If I do not find a way to stop him asking if I need a hand with every little menial task my entire quantum state will surely find a way to collapse itself.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Ah, here’s some Keats. You need it, with all the sighing and blushing and gazing that you do.” She slides the little poetry book neatly atop the stack, and he glowers at her.

“I think you grossly overestimate his interest in me,” he says. “He made it fairly clear he wanted nothing to do with me during our initial… discussion.”

“And you _under_ estimate the power of expensive scotch,” says Rosalind, holding up the bottle she lifted from someone’s liquor cabinet. “Come along. I think this one’s pretty well pilfered.”

Robert sets the stack of books down on the desk in their library, and Rosalind strolls out to the sitting room, where Booker happens to be already.

“DeWitt,” she greets him. “There you are.”

“I was the one looking for _you_ ,” he says. His eyes dart to Robert as he comes in behind her, and Robert is quick to look elsewhere.

“We’re drinking tonight,” says Rosalind, utterly, maddeningly devoid of pretense. She holds up the bottle and gives it an enticing slosh. “Have a seat.”

“I…”

“It’s best not to argue with her,” sighs Robert, and moves around to one of the armchairs, dropping into it with a heavy sigh.

Booker stares at him for an uncomfortable moment before setting himself down in the opposing armchair.

“One never did see two grown men so desperately unenthused about sharing a _drink_ ,” Rosalind remarks. She, at least, is dead-set on enjoying herself. She sweeps three glasses out of the ether in quick succession, pouring and handing them off before she settles into the window seat with her own. “A toast, to… cohabitation, I suppose.”

Booker fixes her with a deeply unimpressed look, but he raises his glass half-heartedly and takes a sip.

It does not take long for the evening to unravel—or come together, depending on one’s perspective.

Drunkenness for the Luteces is an achievable goal only if they allow it. Robert sips slowly and noncommittally, never quite able to make up his mind, in the end becoming appreciably tipsy. Rosalind indulges herself to the point of stable buzz, playing it up as something more for the benefit of her two obstinate companions. Booker is easy. A man of strong tolerance, he nevertheless becomes drunk enough to slouch in his chair, sprawling out and smirking around the room as Rosalind regales them with whatever tales she can muster.

“No, no, you _don’t_ understand,” she exclaims, gesturing aggressively with the bottle, which she’s now claimed as her own. “All you have in your head is the _final version_ of events. The last revision is all that counts. You don’t remember—” She hiccups, looks astonished at herself, then laughs it off. “You don’t remember any of the times you _failed_. There were… an awful lot of them. How many do you suppose there were, brother?”

“You know how many, dear sister,” says Robert thinly.

Rosalind gives him a sort of pout that somehow manages to be smug, then looks at Booker. “It’s better I don’t tell you. It is dreadfully embarrassing. Most times it was simply Columbia’s police getting the better of you, or failing to catch yourself on the sky-lines. On one occasion you managed to get half-loose of the chair in the lighthouse and in your tumbling about smashed through the glass, unbalanced the whole mechanism which caused one of the rockets to short out, and then you plummeted straight back into the ocean. _Plonk_!” She mimes his fall and landing with gusto, and Robert stares at her, slightly agape. “Fortunately you were already dead, or at least unconscious, from the force of breaking through the glass, so you didn’t have to suffer the impact of the water shattering all your bones. Or you could have drowned your way out, I suppose. That would have been wonderfully ironic.”

“For the love of—” Robert pinches the bridge of his nose, flushing up to his ears.

“My brother hates when I engage in morbid humor. Don’t you, brother?” Rosalind smiles at him. “I think it reminds him we are free of the bonds of mortality.”

“If you would please get a hold of yourself,” Robert implores her, his head still in his hand.

“Jokes are all right with me,” says Booker mildly. “The whole thing’s so damn absurd already. May as well.”

Rosalind grins. “I knew you’d see it that way.”

“You don’t like your immortality, then, Robert?” Booker is looking at him. Robert knows, both because of the subtle shift in direction of his voice and the sudden prickling of hair up the back of his neck.

“It never quite sat right with him,” sighs Rosalind. “He feels we cheated. Or _were_ cheated, I suppose.”

“Funny way of looking at it. Most folks would want to live forever, I think.”

“That is because they imagine a life without the fear of death to be a life without pain or suffering,” says Robert. He looks up, though he finds he can’t hold Booker’s gaze, and settles on Rosalind instead. “And because they cannot truly imagine what _forever_ is. Furthermore, we are _not_ , to put a finer point on it, alive. What we _are_ is not dead.”

“Is there a difference?” says Booker.

“Quite!” says Rosalind with an eager nod. “But it doesn’t make for riveting fireside conversation, I find.”

“We exist everywhere, and nowhere, at once,” says Robert. “It is not life. It is… simply being. Absent any growth or discovery.”

“But none of that pain or suffering, I’ll bet,” says Booker, raising an eyebrow. He sits forward, elbows braced on his knees, holding his empty glass with strange gentility. Staring at Robert.

“Not especially, no,” says Robert quietly, looking back. “Though personally, I don’t see that to be a draw. I believe sorrow to be a part of life, just as any other. To live without it is just as hollow as living without happiness.”

“A lot less likely, though.” Booker smirks without much humor.

“Don’t believe my brother,” sighs Rosalind, seeming utterly indifferent to the growing tension in the room. “He has found plenty of inlets for misery. That _is_ why this house exists, you know. That’s why you’re here. So that he might atone.”

Robert looks at her sharply, but she ignores him.

“Oh, we talked about that,” says Booker, settling back in his chair once again. “It’s funny, though, when he mentioned the baptism—you know, _my_ shot at atonement—he called it a cheap exit.”

“It was. And it didn’t offer any real sort of atonement. Comstock was a part of you unwilling to face himself. That _you_ still remain is a sign there is something greater in you. And that, I suspect, is what my brother likes about you.” Rosalind takes a small swig from the bottle, then adds quickly, “ _This_ was certainly not cheap. I don’t know how it qualifies as atonement. But cheap, it was not. And don’t let him hear you suggest otherwise.” Abruptly, she slides off the window seat, standing with the bottle, surveying them both with a lofty expression. “Making an _effort_ for someone is never cheap, Mr. DeWitt. You might try it sometime.”

With this, seemingly done with the whole endeavor, she stalks promptly out of the room.

 

“Forgive me,” interrupts Rosalind, then interrupts herself again to take a hefty sip of her gin; “but I don’t understand why we _encouraged_ them so. Staying in that house went against everything we _were_ , surely to encourage that association—”

“It is as I said before: we want Robert to be happy.” Rene stirs the dregs of her drink. “But it’s more than that. Rosalind. Darling. You don’t remember this part, evidently, so you truly don’t understand. You don’t know what it was _like_.” Rene fixes her with a frank, dull-eyed stare. “Booker DeWitt wanted, _desperately_ , to… _engage_ with our brother. It was abysmally, relentlessly apparent. Yet he spent all his time hanging off of _us_. Being ‘helpful’. Making…” (she shudders) “ _small talk_.”

“Oh, dear.” Rosalind makes a face. She is rather glad her memory isn’t filling in those less important pieces.

“Something had to be _done_ ,” says Rene. “And because men are impossible, it had to be done by us.”

“So you made them drunk.”

“And I got them talking.” Rene knocks back the remainder of her gin, then studies the empty glass with visible satisfaction. “And then I _walked away_.” She raises her eyebrows at Rosalind. “That part is key.”

“I had supposed as much,” says Rosalind dryly.

 

Booker watches Rosalind depart with their bottle, then lets his eyes slide back to Robert. Robert sits rigidly, staring with great intent at the rug.

“Does she think she’s being anywhere close to subtle?” says Booker after a moment.

“No,” says Robert flatly. “She does not.”

Booker chuckles, finishes his drink, and sets the glass on the floor. He does all this quite leisurely, and then goes on studying Robert until, finally, Robert can avoid his eyes no longer and looks up. “Do you require something, Mr. DeWitt?”

“It’s just Booker.”

“All right, then. Anything else?” Robert knows he is being unnecessarily curt; he is irritable thanks to the efforts of his sister, as well as feeling unduly trapped both under the haze of alcohol and here in this room. He knows, too, that he could be both sober and elsewhere in the blink of an eye, with nothing but a thought. It is singularly unnerving to realize that in spite of it all, the awkwardness, the discomfort, and his vast array of alternatives, there is truly nowhere else he would rather be.

“I’m wondering when you’re gonna stop trying to punish yourself,” says Booker.

Robert frowns, not quite sure how to parse this remark.

“You know, for all those mistakes. Getting me involved. Taking my daughter. Bringing me here. It’s just you haven’t said two words to me since… well. It’s starting to feel unfriendly.”

Robert gives him a rather incredulous look. “ _You_ were angry with _me_ ,” he says. “You’re the one always clinging to self-punishment, can’t you accept it on someone else for once? You ought to be angry. What I did was selfish.”

“You think I’m the type to hold a grudge over something like that? After all the shit I’ve done? Shit, Robert, it’s _because_ of what I’ve done that I think you ought to give it a rest. You’re a damn saint by comparison.” Booker regards him with amusement, then slowly pushes himself to his feet. He sways a bit, but holds his gaze steady. “Even if I were bent on staying angry—you think I’ll be sated just to see you mope around for a while?”

“I don’t know what I thought, Mr. D—Booker.” Robert turns away, full of nervous energy. “It is you who wouldn’t come near me.”

“I’m here now.”

Robert says nothing. Booker takes a few steps across the room, coming close, close enough that Robert cannot help but turn back toward him, adrenaline heating gradually under his skin. He keeps his gaze downturned, looking just past Booker, once again unable to meet his eyes.

“You think you owe me something for what you’ve done?” says Booker, his voice far softer than usual.

“That was the intent of this place, after all,” murmurs Robert.

Booker’s fingers brush along Robert’s jaw, hooking gently under his chin before he can quite pull away. Robert’s breath catches, but he allows Booker to tilt his head up a bit, finally drawing their eyes to meet.

“What else?” says Booker, impossibly steady.

Robert swallows with even greater effort, his breath coming in slow and shuddering. It’s a long moment before he can answer; he knows the game being played now, and he still feels hopelessly unprepared for it, but he’s not about to disrupt it. He only prays it lasts this time. “I would do whatever you wished,” he says quietly.

“Yeah?” The corner of Booker’s mouth turns up in a satisfied smirk. “What if I told you it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Robert admits. He wishes he’d had the foresight to set his glass down, caught balancing it between his fingers when all he wants is to grip the armrests of his chair. “I wouldn’t expect it to. And it wouldn’t matter.”

“Mmh.” Booker’s smirk softens into more of a smile. “You don’t owe me anything, Robert. This bullshit life you got me is already more than I deserve.” He slides his fingers down from Robert’s chin to curl around the back of his neck. “But if you’re offering…”

Robert’s lips part in a wordless plea and the glass slips from his fingers, landing with a safe, muffled thud on the rug, his remaining scotch spilling out and soaking into the fibers. Neither of them could care less. Booker moves in closer, climbing right onto the armchair and straddling Robert’s hips. He looms down over him, leans in close, the scent of alcohol warm on his breath, his lips coming unbearably close to Robert’s ear.

“I’ll take what you got.”

Robert draws a slow, tremulous breath, an instant of stillness before inevitable surrender. He turns his head ever so slightly toward Booker, and this hesitant motion is all the acquiescence Booker needs, turning quickly to meet him. He bears down over Robert, both hands cupping around his face, thumbs smoothing over the ridges of his cheekbones, and kisses him as he has never been kissed. Robert’s past experiences could never approach the sheer volume of context and tension shared between himself and this man—anything from before he departed his own universe pales in comparison. Within seconds he’s given himself up completely, utterly malleable in Booker’s hands; his own hands wander from the chair’s armrests to settle tentatively at Booker’s waist, and Booker grips him all the tighter, fingers tangling into his hair, mussing it eagerly from its ordinary tidiness.

When Booker finally pulls back, Robert is left gasping, staring up at him in wide-eyed amazement. Booker favors him with a rakish grin and settles in closer, his weight pinning Robert against the chair. A startled, hungry sort of noise escapes Robert as he braces his hands against Booker’s thighs. They are crowded in this position, but Booker is apparently disinterested in either comfort or logistics. He seizes Robert by his tie and holds on tight as he ruts slowly against his chest. Robert can already feel him getting hard, and he utters a soft, involuntary whimper, wriggling beneath Booker in an unfocused desire to feel, to touch, to hold.

“I knew you weren’t as buttoned up as you act,” says Booker with a low, gravelly chuckle, breathing hot against his neck. He tugs at Robert’s tie, forcing him a little closer, forcing another gasp. Robert moves his hands to twist into Booker’s shirt, unable to articulate, _begging_ , he’s not sure for what.

“C’mere.” Booker climbs back off him, pulling on the tie to drag him forward. Robert obliges him easily, sliding off the chair and down to his knees—unconfident in his ability to hold himself up, yes, but more to the point, _wanting_. He looks up at Booker, who holds his gaze readily. He seems mildly surprised, but still he is smiling.

“Well,” he says, “as atonement goes this ain’t half-bad.” He touches Robert’s chin again, still holding his tie loosely, a leash he’s disinclined to give up.

Robert lets out a frustrated huff. In some philosophical way, he supposes Booker is on the money with this remark, but he doesn’t wish to entertain that thought. “I thought you intended to _take_ what I was offering,” he says archly.

“What, you don’t like the conversation?” Booker’s thumb scrapes slowly, softly along Robert’s cheek. “Funny, here I thought _talking_ was all you two were good at.”

“Not when I have—other priorities,” protests Robert, squirming a little.

“Still making the conversation just fine.”

“Then perhaps you ought to shut me up.”

“Perhaps I like making you wait.”

“You are—” Robert starts in earnest agitation, and Booker cuts him off easily with another sharp yank to the tie, drawing another plaintive moan. Robert sinks forward, coming perilously close, fingers twitching with anticipation as he reaches for Booker’s hips. “—incorrigible,” he murmurs.

“So I’ve been told.” Booker reaches for his trousers with his free hand, unbuttoning them, pushing his undergarments down just enough, apparently no interest in getting any further undressed just yet. This suits Robert just fine. His own clothes are feeling unusually tight and uncomfortable, but he it’s a discomfort he can work with. The idea of them stripping down feels far too complicated right now.

Booker eases his cock out, and Robert does not wait for him to impel him forward; he just closes the gap between them, wetting his lips and licking a long, slow stroke up the shaft.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Booker hisses, lurching over. He ends up unbalancing completely, not drunk enough to be impaired but not sober enough to be steady. He reaches out to brace himself and stumbles, tripping past Robert and more or less spilling back into the chair.

A laugh bursts out of Robert, and it startles him more than anything else that has transpired so far. He has not laughed in—he cannot remember the last time. The muscles in his face are not used to the sensation. He goes quiet, staring at Booker, still on his knees, his own cock hardening almost painfully, the fabric stretched tight between his legs. He suffers a bewildering moment of self-awareness, self-consciousness—what is he _doing_ , kneeling here on the floor, tipsy and aroused and _laughing_?

“Uhh,” says Booker, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Perhaps you ought to stay there,” says Robert, recovering himself well enough. He turns himself fully around and resettles himself between Booker’s spread knees, leaning in to wrap his hand around the base of his cock. Booker adjusts his hips, moving himself a little closer, his breathing shallow and unsteady.

“Go on, then,” he murmurs.

Not needing a command but appreciating it anyway, Robert takes Booker wholly in his mouth, moaning softly as the heat and flavor of him overpowers his senses. Booker’s hips rock forward, a seemingly involuntary action, and Robert just barely manages to overpower his gag reflex. It _has_ been a while, but he was always good at this. Conversation is not the only talent of his tongue, and he intends to prove it.

Booker twitches and groans as Robert works; he seems to be struggling to control himself, which Robert finds disagreeable. He keeps relatively still, tongue sliding hotly over the shaft, cheeks hollowing as he sucks him nice and slow, doing everything he can to make Booker want _more_ ; he wants Booker to follow up on his word, to _take_ what he wants, but the man’s restraint is, for once, impressive.

Finally, impatient, Robert seizes one of Booker’s hands and places it atop his own head. Booker’s eyes fly open, staring at him in astonishment; Robert stares back in an open, voiceless challenge. A breathless instant passes where Booker is just sitting there stupidly, and then he lets his fingers curl into Robert’s hair, gripping him tight, and when Robert makes a muffled, needy sound that is very easily understood as _yes_ , Booker sits up straighter, hunkering over him, and starts grinding against him, forcing Robert to accept more of him, truly and properly fucking his mouth.

Robert feels a swell of pride amidst overwhelming arousal—he really is fucking good at this, isn’t he? The desire for relief is agony; he’s desperate to touch himself, but he refuses to allow it, keeping one hand on Booker’s leg while the other works in tandem with his mouth. He relaxes his throat, letting himself swallow around the head, and Booker’s whole body shudders as he lets out a strangled yell.

“God damn,” Booker grits out. “ _Fuck_ , you’re so good.”

Robert lets out a frantic little whine, unexpectedly gripped by the note of praise.

“Wait—Robert—stop.” Booker pushes him back gently and with effort, and Robert eases off him, gazing up at him, lips parted and shining. Breathing slow and heavy.

“I don’t want to just…. Come here.” Booker gets to his feet, more unbalanced now than ever, but it’s enough to grab Robert by his shirt and haul him up, pushing him back and onto the sofa. Robert falls back with a surprised gasp; Booker comes down on top of him, struggling to undress himself, or Robert, or both. Robert reaches down to help him, both fumbling and shifting awkwardly against each other. Halfway through, Booker abandons the process in favor of kissing Robert again, hands cupping back around him, at once hungry and tender.

Robert continues fussing with his clothes even as he kisses Booker back, smiling warmly into it—he wants to laugh again, feeling a strange lightness in his chest, his heart beating rapidly, filled with an incredible desire to wrap his arms around Booker and press tight against him, leaning into his neck and letting the scent of him overpower everything else. In imagining anything like this, he’d never imagined it like _this_ —he’d expected something perfunctory, or impersonal. But Booker wants more from him, takes his time with him, his rough, calloused hands moving slowly, carefully, gently all over him. As if this is something he truly wants; not just something he was willing to take. And as he realizes this, Robert realizes he is _happy_. It is so much, so terribly much, that he feels he might begin to weep.

“I want to—” Booker pulls back and resumes the effort getting Robert’s trousers off. “God, Robert, you feel so fucking good. I want to hear you scream.”

“You will,” says Robert breathlessly, and he does laugh, incredulous, scarcely able to believe this is happening.

When Booker finally gets him in the state he wants, both of them still half-dressed, clothes in an absurd tangled heap beneath them, he grips Robert by the hips and hoists him up. Even now, Robert half-expects Booker to just fuck him without ceremony, but Booker takes his time, keeping an eye on Robert as he licks his hand and prepares him, efficient but not without care. He rests his free hand on Robert’s thigh, massaging lightly to help his muscles relax. He knows very well what he is doing, of course, but Robert suspects he doesn’t often behave quite like _this_. Robert’s breath grows shorter and shallower as Booker eases himself in, until finally he pushes pass the threshold of resistance, and Robert cries out sharply, one hand grabbing at Booker’s shirt, the other clawing at the back of the sofa. Booker moves achingly slow, grunting with the effort, pushing them both gingerly toward the brink, and Robert feels he might come undone. His breath shudders; he throws an arm across his eyes, unable to look at Booker, as if he might shine as bright as the sun.

Booker’s reaction is quick; he seizes Robert’s wrists, pulling his arm away from his eyes and pinning him down as he looms over him, thrusting a little harder now. “I want to see you,” he says, his voice low and gruff, thick with arousal. “I want to see you watching me.”

“Oh—” Robert moans, writhing in his grip, squeezing around him. “Y—”

Booker gasps and jerks his hips, drawing a shrill whine from Robert; he can’t speak from the tight, overwhelming sensation of having Booker inside him, and he realizes he _is_ weeping, tears spilling freely down his cheeks. He hasn’t cried during sex since the first time, so very long ago, and in a way this _is_ a first, sex after life after death—he wasn’t sure it would _work_ , or wasn’t sure he’d ever—but it doesn’t matter. Booker is watching him, something shifting in his expression as he realizes Robert is crying; he lets go of one of his wrists and reaches slowly to Robert’s cheek, catching his tears on his fingertips.

“Booker,” Robert whispers, gasping, breathless.

“I’ve got you.” Booker is quieter now, staring at Robert intently. “I’ve got you.”

///

Robert is quiet for a long time, staring hard at the kitchen table.

The further he got into it, the less detail Booker was able to provide, but in the end it didn’t matter; in the end it _all_ came back, not just the events of that first week, but all of it. Right up until there was nothing left to remember.

Still, Robert is quiet, and Booker is left fidgeting in the awkward silence.

“You don’t seem entirely… pleased that I’m here,” he says finally.

“I don’t know what to feel.” Robert looks away. “You are someone I had grown to care for, and I had made peace with the knowledge that I would never have the opportunity to explore that. Why shouldn’t I? I have done you immense wrong, and I watched you die for it over and over again. Now I learn this… other variation of myself did you even _further_ harm, and was able to have that exploration, and I remember it, but… but that wasn’t _me_. Not really.”

“Yeah,” says Booker. “Now you know how I felt.”

“I always expected you would hate me if you had the chance.” Robert glances at him, evasive, nervous, but unwilling to be cold. “But here you are.”

“ _Hate_ you?” Booker looks at him, edgy, agitated. “You know by now that I don’t.”

“Do I know that?” Robert runs a hand through his hair, mussing it unintentionally. “You formed a physical attachment to this… other self. I suppose it makes sense that you’d wish to continue that, but—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Booker stares at him, seeming genuinely baffled. “I thought you said you remembered.”

“I remember _sex_ , Booker,” says Robert, infuriatingly unable to control his blushing as he says it. “You never—We never _spoke_ about—Why did you _come_ here, why would you not just move on, if you were free of me? You could go _anywhere_ , but you came here.”

“Christ, Robert.” Booker rubs a hand over his face, looking like he isn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed. “It isn’t just about the _sex_. Maybe that’s what I thought it was at first, or expected it to be, because… well, that’s almost all it’s ever been. I didn’t…” He pushes a hand through his hair, keeping it there for a few moments, staring vacantly at the table. “Look. What you said to me the morning I woke up, it… you said I don’t deserve forgiveness, and you’re right. But I didn’t deserve any of this, and you gave that to me anyway. No one’s ever…” He shakes his head, frustrated at his own inability to articulate. “I didn’t _tell_ you, we didn’t _talk_ about it, because I don’t know how to do that. And I never had time to figure it out. And I’m here because… well, I’m done making that mistake.” He lowers his hand and glances at it, the brand on the back of it, and the stains of blood from the handkerchief. “I came here because you meant something to me, Robert. Because you—because for the first time since Annabelle, someone actually gave a damn about me.”

Robert’s gaze softens slowly, the tension leaving him bit by bit. “ _Meant_ ,” he repeats, no accusation or confusion, just an observation.

“You know what I mean,” says Booker impatiently. “I was angry at you for what you did, for all this, but… you were right. A place where I can just live, just… just _be_. It’s…” He shrugs, heaving a sigh, words becoming increasingly difficult. “I’m no good at this shit. I could barely tell my wife I loved her, and then I lost her, and I regretted it for the rest of my life. I thought I could get better at it with you. I thought I had _time_. But then you—And I don’t want to lose that chance again. You’re right, I could have left, but I didn’t, I stayed because I fell in love with you, Robert.”

Robert stops breathing for a full few seconds.

Still, Booker seems wildly ill-at-ease. “I want to—I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I don’t deserve you any more than the rest of it, but you gave me something I never thought I’d have, and that’s… you looked at me like, like I was doing something _right_. Something good. I realized that… no matter how terrible a life I’ve led, I can still do something _good_ for someone. For you.”

It’s too much. Robert’s hands are shaking. “I ruined your life,” he says. “I stole you away from what little you had left.”

“You tried to fix things. And fixing things ain’t easy.” Booker lets out a little ghost of a laugh, distant and rueful. “I’ll admit, I can see why she—why Rosalind wouldn’t want to give any of that immortality shit up. Being able to fix your mistakes, trying at least. I wish I could do that. There’s so much I’d want to change, so much I’d want to fix. I’d be a different person. I’d have lived a different life. So much wouldn’t have happened.” He meets Robert’s eyes again, wearing a disarmingly serious expression. “You gave all that up because you wanted a chance to live. And that’s what you gave me—the chance to just _live_. I’d be a damn fool not to take it and not to be grateful. Robert…” He leans over the table a little, reaching out to take Robert’s hand, and Robert lets him. “You understand? That’s why I’m here, that’s why we set all this up. _You’re_ what I have left.”

Robert’s body almost moves on its own. He leans forward, right out of his chair, reaching across the table and pulling Booker toward him and kissing him. Booker clutches him tightly by the shoulders, desperate, hungry. Familiar. Robert knows _he_ , himself, has never done this before. His awareness that it was even an option is brand new. It ought to feel strange.

But it’s like riding a bicycle.

One never really forgets.

One just needs the courage to climb aboard.


	5. separation

Rene is quiet for a long time, running a finger slowly along the rim of her empty glass.

Rosalind remembers most of it now: the increasing transparency of Booker’s feelings for Robert, his continual refusal to acknowledge it, Robert’s gradual dependence on the house and on playacting mortality. Yet even as her memory fills in, supplying even pieces that Rene has not told her, there remains a void at the end of it. Strange how these last few memories are so murky. Almost as if her mind rejects them more completely than the rest, as if a part of her knows that she doesn’t _want_ to remember.

Or perhaps it’s not strange at all. Perhaps it makes perfect sense.

She can guess well enough at the outcome. Tragedy of some kind. An unspeakable loss. It is the dark curiosity of _how_ and _what_ that produces the itch under her skin, the desperation to _know_.

She watches her sister-self carefully, endeavoring to show patience. She does not wish to rush the telling of what is obviously a difficult story. But it is almost beginning to seem like Rene has forgotten her, and finally, after enough time has passed with no appreciable change, Rosalind leans forward.

“Are you all right?” she asks softly. It is an unusual courtesy for her to extend. She is not much in the habit of showing concern or consideration for others, to the perpetual frustration of her brother. She supposes she shouldn’t be too proud of herself; showing concern for one’s own self is, after all, a form of self-absorption, even when it is a necessary concern. Even when one’s self is a separate person.

Rene stirs, eyes widening slightly as she looks at Rosalind again, adjusting her position as though awakening from a nap. “Forgive me,” she says absently. “This is… difficult to relate.”

“I know.” Rosalind sets her own glass aside and settles her hands back in her lap. “I don’t recall what happened, but I know it must have been…. I remember a growing feeling of resentment, of impatience with Robert. With the situation.”

Rene nods. “He wanted to stay,” she says. “We knew it, even if he would not confirm it. He wanted to live here, with Booker, with me, and just be… an odd sort of family.”

“But he knew we could never be happy like that,” murmurs Rosalind.

Rene nods again. “So he never suggested it.”

“And you—we wanted to find a solution?” Rosalind guesses.

Rene doesn’t answer her. She gets up abruptly, suddenly seeming to need the movement. “Would you like another drink?” she says. She doesn’t wait for an answer before proceeding to the liquor cabinet.

“I don’t need one,” says Rosalind quietly. “Forgive me, sister, but I don’t think you do, either.”

Rene stops, her hand on the bottle, staring at it for moment, then looking at Rosalind. “Does it matter?” she asks.

Rosalind holds eye contact steadily, not certain where this is headed. “I won’t stop you,” she says slowly, “but I think we’re well between states right now. I don’t want to see you tip over the edge. I like being able to talk to you now, as we are.”

Rene gazes at her for a sustained moment, then shrugs and abandons her post. “I like it, too,” she admits. She stops by the sofa but does not sit, instead turning to Rosalind and holding out a hand. “I’ve decided you’re much too far away. Sit with me over here. You almost completely remember what it was to _be_ me, even if you technically weren’t—I daresay we’ve moved past staring at each other from across this miserable room, don’t you?”

Rosalind hesitates, but not because she in any way disagrees. She takes the offered hand, unusually tentative. Touching one’s own hands, knowing they do not belong to you, is a strange experience. They are quite familiar, and yet quite foreign.

Rene’s hand is cool and dry, and she grips tightly to pull Rosalind up from her seat and draw her over a small sea of clutter to the sofa. There, she settles back in comfortably and knocks a few scattered objects aside to make room before pulling Rosalind down alongside her.

“Much better,” she concludes.

“It is certainly cozier,” says Rosalind, feeling strangely heightened. Being this close to herself is… different. She can better see all the details in which they differ, from every stray hair coming undone from Rene’s braid to the paleness of her skin—which, for someone who started out incredibly pale, is saying something. And it’s more than seeing, now; she can smell, too, the general scent of herself, at once familiar and distinct. It is… distracting.

“It’s been so long since I…” Rene starts to say, then cuts herself off. She studies their hands for a moment, then reaches out and laces her fingers back together with Rosalind’s. “Will you allow me the impropriety?”

“It is scarcely _that_ ,” says Rosalind, gazing at their hands in an offhandedly fixed way.

“Well,” says Rene, but it seems she has no follow-up. There follows another period of silence as they sit together, until finally she draws a slow breath and lets it out just as slowly. “We did want a solution,” she says, her voice now falling back into the low, numb tone she has adopted when telling the story. It has the feel of an academic report, as though she is trying to remain as objective and removed as possible. “And we thought we had. In truth, forcing ourselves to experience time again was having… a rather detrimental effect on both of us. In Robert it was dulled, because he had so much to distract him, but I could see it—we were both becoming _tired_ , strained. And I—we were losing our objectivity, our composure. Blinded by emotion. We were _convinced_ we had a solution, where none existed; just as we were convinced that what we wanted was Robert’s happiness. But Robert _was_ happy. We—I was not.”

There is an uncomfortable tug in Rosalind’s gut as she says this. Hers was the same experience, of course—earlier when Rene had alluded to that, Rosalind had taken it as a slight, but it was nothing of the kind. It was commiseration.

The closer she gets to the full truth of what happened, the more on edge Rosalind finds herself. She understands her own tone of voice, what all that hesitation and floundering about, wanting to drink, to establish contact, to seek comfort. Reluctant to tell the story, obliquely self-critical in the telling. Rosalind recognizes all of that, and knows what it means.

Whatever happened to Robert, it was her— _their_ —fault.

///

She is growing restless, and Robert knows it. She knows he does. They aren’t meant to be like this, existing, _subsisting_ , rather. He, it seems, is content to take half-measures, to pretend at life as long as he can have emotional and physical fulfillment. But what of the intellectual? Life has offered Robert little in matters of the heart, and now he drinks his fill from that well; but it will come back around. He is a genius, just like her; if he lives, he must _work_. If there is no work to be found, he will eventually stagnate, a process that has already begun in her. The multiplicity of their existence is what holds that stagnation at bay, and she is eager to return to it, weary and resentful of his continued avoidance. How far does it go? How long can they falsify their own mortality before it becomes permanent? And what will become of them if it does?

Rosalind recognizes well enough that Robert’s judgment is impaired. Her own falls into a blind spot. Such is the way of a singular perspective.

When Robert finds her in the cellar, she has been there for what amounts to three days—not consecutively, still darting and weaving through the thicket of time and space where it becomes necessary, but an inordinate amount of time spent in one place on one activity nonetheless—working tirelessly on the Contraption. It is the first time either of them has engaged in such work without discussion, collaboration, or consensus. He is, naturally and understandably, perturbed.

“What are you doing?” he demands, a question they haven’t had to ask each other before, perhaps not ever.

“Finding a way to fix this.” She doesn’t spare him a glance, too engrossed in her current task. It is all delicate detail work on the inner circuitry of the Contraption—intricate stuff, not something easily interrupted. She needs everything just so.

He doesn’t ask her _fixing what_ , because he knows. Of course he knows.

Still, she elaborates as if he _has_ asked: “We cannot remain like this. Something must change, and I know what _you_ would suggest. I would propose an alternative outcome.”

“Which is?” Robert comes closer by just a step. She detests his outward caution, the apprehension in his body language. As though he were afraid of her.

“A bit of madness, I admit,” she says, refusing to be daunted. “But I believe it will work.”

“What is it you intend to do?” he persists. Another step closer.

“If I can rig the Contraption to behave in exactly the right way,” she says, groping about distractedly for a wrench, “I believe I can create a similar effect to what happened to us. I believe I can, therefore, apply it to Mr. DeWitt.” She finds the wrench and sets in on a particularly stubborn bit of the machine, trying to loosen and open another panel.

“You’re not serious,” says Robert after an unnatural pause. He sounds quiet. He sounds horrified.

“Am I not?” She grunts as she leans her weight into the wrench. “It would not be my first choice, nor my second, nor third, but—as you seem overly fond of the man—” she grunts once more and finally forces the panel open, revealing more wires that need a complex rearranging, “—I see no alternative but to bring him to our level. So that we can go on as we are meant to, and you shall not have to give him up. A compromise.”

“That is _not_ a compromise,” he says sharply.

“Is.”

“Isn’t!” He is closer now, within reach. “Dammit, I—I don’t want to play word games. Listen to me!” He reaches out and seizes her arm, pulling her bodily from the machine, drawing her up to her feet. He is not rough—she suspects he would not know how to be—but his grip is firm, and he is difficult to resist. She gets up and wrests her arm from his hold, glaring at him. He has never done anything like this, not ever. He hasn’t needed to.

“We must take action,” she says coldly. “You are changing too much. This is dangerous.”

“We are _both_ changing!” he says, and raises a hand to indicate the Contraption. “ _This_ is dangerous! Have you completely lost your sense? We will not do this to him, not to _anyone_.”

“I am doing this for _you_.”

“Yes, you always are,” he snaps. “Always doing things on my behalf. It’s gotten so you don’t even see fit to ask me anymore. You cannot make these decisions on your own. You cannot _do_ this—we didn’t choose this existence, and we have no right to force it on someone else!”

“As if it has been so terrible!” She finds she cannot look at him and redirects her gaze to the machine, her arms folded tightly. “We have the _multiverse_ at our fingertips, brother. How can that be so undesirable to you? If we are one in the same, why do you not see it as I do, that to give that up would be—would be a fate worse than death?”

“We are not the same,” he says softly. “We are different people. Even here, operating within the same plane of existence, we shall always have different perspectives. You do not want to lose what we have, and I understand that, and I am not asking you to give it up. I have not _hated_ living like this, but it was never my preference, and if there is a chance to change it, I would take it, gladly. You know that. It was _you_ who agreed to take these steps. You did so for me. You claim that _this_ is for me as well, but it isn’t, and you know that, too. It’s for _you_.”

He is right, of course he is. Time spent like this, outside their usual patterns of existence, has stretched her capacity for reason and sense, and made her desperate to retain what she has of herself, to the point of madness. She wants more than anything to believe Robert needs her just as she needs him. But he is right. He is different. _They_ are different.

She resists the concession, because it feels like surrender. She wants, overpoweringly, to find some way to convince him. She wants them to return to the way they were.

“I only want your happiness,” she says, and there is a pleading tone to it she finds disconcerting but knows not how to avoid.

“And what about you?” Robert demands. “Your happiness? You think I don’t want that for you? For as long as you’ve sought to give me what _I_ desire, I want just as much to find a way for us both to be at peace. What good is my contentment if it comes at the cost of yours?”

Rosalind is quiet for a long moment, still gazing at the Contraption, which already crackles with energy from her adjustments. His outburst has pacified her some, replacing desperation with sadness and resignation. Dear Robert. He really is terribly naïve at times.

“Sometimes, brother,” she says, turning slowly back toward him, “it is not possible to have both.” She reaches out and takes his hands, holding them gingerly. They do not find cause to touch each other often, but there is still comfort in the gesture. She lifts her eyes to meet his. “Sometimes we must choose. I always have, and always will, choose yours.”

He softens, gazing back at her, and gives her hands a gentle squeeze. “Well I would very much like you to stop that,” he says. “Please, sister. I don’t want this. _He_ won’t want this. And you _certainly_ don’t. Eternity with Booker DeWitt? What on earth would we do with him?”

“Isn’t that what you’re after?” she asks rather sullenly.

“I don’t want _eternity_ with him,” he says, half-laughing at the notion. “I want _life_.”

Her silence here is as deafening as it is unusual.

Robert heaves a sigh. “If I must choose between you,” he says, “I will always choose you. Surely you know that.”

“You should not have to make that choice,” she says bluntly. “You love him.”

He seems caught off guard by this, but he hesitates only a moment before he says, “Yes.”

“Then…” She looks away, dropping his hands as an afterthought and pulling her arms back around herself. “I only wanted to find a way to avoid forcing you to choose.”

“I understand,” he says, “but this is not it.” He glances at the machine, whirring steadily under the stress of her work. “Please. This is lunacy. You know it to be.”

“Yes.” She averts her eyes, feeling an uncomfortable swell of shame. “I’m sorry.” She draws a slow, steadying breath. “It seems I lost myself.”

Robert smiles with both relief and affection. She isn’t looking at him, but she knows. They always know this sort of thing. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he says.

For a moment they stand there in silence, then she turns back to the Contraption, crouching back down to set its pieces back into place. Robert hesitates, watching her, then crouches down beside her. It has been a while since they worked on this old beast together.

“Quite the job you did on this,” he remarks.

“Not my best work.”

“No.”

She smirks at his quick agreement; far from stinging, the jab feels pleasantly familiar. They are always at their best when challenging each other. “Well, help me undo it, then.”

“If I must.”

They work alongside each other in quiet for a moment, not needing to discuss what they’re doing. That renewed partnership, the reinforcement of their bonded duality, is of great comfort to Rosalind. She can feel herself returning, gradually, to internal equilibrium, her swirl of emotional unrest dissipating. But it is a gentle process. And it is not fast enough.

She is delayed in noticing that something is wrong, that the machine has started to emit an unusual hiss, that the energy buildup she had been cultivating has not lessened, even under their careful adjustments. Not careful enough, it would seem. Either that or her work had been too good, and the Contraption was too far out of her hands at this point. Either that or she had simply made a mistake.

Questions, possibilities, that would come to haunt her.

“What’s happening?” Robert says suddenly, looking up at the machine in open concern.

For a moment Rosalind doesn’t answer him, struggling to right the adjustments she made, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect, and the hiss is starting to become more of a hum, its pitch rising as it speeds up, its volume increasing steadily.

“It’s not supposed to—” she says tersely, and, realizing it has simply slipped her control like a wild horse, she takes her hands away, feeling unnaturally helpless. “I didn’t mean for this to—I, I must have made a mistake.”

Mistakes have happened before. Not quite like this. Not with so clear and immediate a danger.

“It’s going to overload,” says Robert tersely.

She doesn’t need him to tell her this, anymore than he needs her to elaborate: “If it overloads it could—”

“—it _will_ —”

It is at the base of their house, after all. Such an explosion would destroy the structure—that was always a danger in keeping something so powerful inside, but it was a calculated danger, a risk they understood. As for what else it could do—considering what it has _already_ done—they cannot even imagine.

“We’ve got to shut it down.” Rosalind grits her teeth and stands up, gripping the lever and pulling. If they force it to power down now, they might—but it’s always been a stubborn lever, not easily thrown, designed that way so as to avoid accidental shutdowns. She struggles with it, and Robert gets up to help her.

They do not hear the footsteps coming down the stairs, did not realize how loud the Contraption has become, its hum turning to more of a roar, did not realize that it had begun to shake the house by its very foundations.

Booker’s voice cuts through the chaos: “What the hell is going on down here?” he demands, and Robert freezes in place as if he’s been caught doing something wrong. Booker stares, taking in the machine, the clear danger of it, and Robert; then he takes a step forward.

Robert flings his arm outward, holding up a hand to stop him. “Stay back!” he shouts, so sharply that Booker is startled into obedience.

“ _Robert!”_ Rosalind cries—startling, or it should be, the first time she’s used his name since their scattering, but now is not the moment for such revelations. She has thrown all her weight against the lever and is still unable to persuade it. Static electricity is buzzing under her hands, and she feels all the hair on her arms and neck standing on end. They are running out of time. She needs his help.

He comes to her side, gripping the lever with her; he is not terribly strong, his body weight not so much greater than hers, but their combined effort is enough that they manage to finally shove the lever down.

The effect is neither immediate nor desired. The machine still crackles and vibrates dangerously, its electric overflow still growing.

“Its running on its own momentum,” says Robert through his teeth. “We’ve got to—”

He reaches out to pry off another panel, perhaps intending to rip out the Contraptions proverbial guts, when a bolt of blue energy sparks off the top of it and strikes them both. They each cry out, pain and shock in equal measure; it’s over in a moment, but it isn’t just simple electrocution, it’s far, far worse. Rosalind has the distinct sensation of being pulled out of her body before snapping back like a rubberband, and she swears she sees Robert fall out of visual phase, doubling up before her eyes like an afterimage, a faded echo of himself. It is only a moment; they return to themselves, though reconstitution is violent, the force of it throwing Rosalind to the ground. Robert catches himself on one of the Contraption’s handles, struggling for steady breath.

“Robert!” Booker shouts, stepping closer. Again, Robert holds out his hand, unable to look at the man but holding him wordlessly at bay. It is to Rosalind that he directs his gaze. She stares back. They both understand something terrible has happened—they _feel_ different, and they each have a developing notion of why, but there is no time to explore it, no time to discuss. Robert pulls himself upright and resumes his struggle with the panel, still bent on destroying the threat from the inside.

Rosalind has no such patience. She reaches about her blindly for the wrench, but it seems to have been blown back a ways, perhaps by the force of what just happened. She gets up and lunges for it, turning around with it raised over her head, ready to destroy the very thing they worked so long to build, their own crowning achievement.

She sees it all play out before her, almost too quick to perceive it, quicker than she can stop it. Time seems to slow, but this is only an illusion. Actual temporal dilation would have been a gift. This is but a miserable trick of her mind, a sign of its incapacity to accept what it saw, what she remembers.

Robert has interrupted his struggle, his back now turned to the machine, once again protesting Booker’s approach. Desperate to keep him out of harm’s way. Booker is wavering, uncertain, neither wanting to simply stand and watch, nor to disobey Robert’s sharp commands. The Contraption sparks again, energy runoff manifesting as another bolt of light, and this time, perhaps because Rosalind is barely outside its range, or perhaps just by cruel chance, it only strikes Robert. Strikes him through the chest, as hard and brutal as a spear. She sees his back arch violently, his entire body going rigid, his mouth opening in—surprise? agony? It doesn’t matter what. As this point, she doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t matter, of course. She’d already hesitated enough.

Rosalind hurls herself at the machine with an incoherent yell, swinging the wrench hard enough that she strains her neck, and strikes the Contraption again and again with all the raw force she can muster, with the same grim, unforgiving intent she’s seen in Booker when he kills—a little less contained, much less experienced. The Contraption dies after she has hit hard enough to dent it; the life sputters out of it and the cellar goes completely dark in the subsequent power surge. For a moment Rosalind can only hear the blood pounding in her ears; then her own heavy breathing; then the jarring clatter as the wrench slips from her fingers. The sound pushing her into action, she gropes about until she finds the circuit breakers, resetting them deftly. The lights come back on. She turns back around. Robert is gone.

He is simply gone.

There is no body. There is not even a smudge or a burn on the ground. There is nothing. In her periphery she sees Booker take another faltering step forward before stopping, his hands hanging limply at his sides. She can’t look at him directly. She can’t think. She can’t even hold herself up. She falls to her knees.

She is breathing very strangely, isn’t she? Hard, short, shallow breaths. They seem to come at a distance. It seems like an interminable time passes before she manages to shape the words she needs to utter.

“He’s gone,” she says simply. Her voice sounds tired, cracked, dead.

Booker looks at her. She can still see him in her peripheral vision but her primary focus is still the empty _nothing_ where Robert once stood.

“Gone where?” Booker asks.

“Nowhere,” says Rosalind. “ _Gone_.” She is shaking. Her voice is shaking. She is not herself.

Booker refuses to understand. “Can’t you… can’t you find him, or—”

“No, Mr. DeWitt, I cannot,” she says quite curtly, and finally manages to look his way. “He is gone. Ripped from reality. There is nothing anyone can do.”

Booker stares at her, his expression hard, difficult to read. She suspects he is near collapse himself. It is a testament to how much he has endured that he does not show it. Finally, he says, “That… that’s not acceptable.”

A laugh tears out of her, ugly and strange. She looks up at him with cold disdain. “ _Acceptable_?” Slowly and with great effort, her muscles tense and burning with adrenaline, she gets to her feet. There is bile rising in her throat. She feels a rapidly growing wave of rage that she cannot hope to quell. She feels so terribly _human_. “This is your fault, you brute,” she snaps. “Do you understand? All this was for you. All of it happened because of _you!”_

She is being cruel, misplacing blame, desperate to keep it off her own shoulders, where it belongs. She knows this. She cannot stop herself. Booker simply stands there and looks at her.

Rosalind draws a slow, not-very-steadying breath. “You will accept it as you have all the other consequences of your vile mistakes,” she says icily. “I wish Robert had never laid eyes on you.”

She storms past him then, her movement wild and uneven, feeling as though she must keep in motion at all costs lest she become unbalanced and fall. She is dissociating, consumed by overwhelming fear and anguish—what will she do now, what now, what now?—driven to the point of single-minded instinctive action. She just wants _out_ , out of that basement, out of his house. The first she can accomplish. The second she cannot.

She tries. It has always been easy, effortless—just flickering across time and space with a thought. At times it wasn’t even intentional or conscious. It just happened, as needed. And now she can’t do it at all. The house presses around her, a suddenly claustrophobic dungeon. She can’t get out. She can’t go anywhere. She understands well enough, even in her state, what has happened to her—her mind pieces it together quickly, because it is simple.

With no alternatives, Rosalind makes her way to the front door, all the way up to the point of resting her hand on the latch before she stops herself. She is still breathing so differently, strained and labored. Where will she go? What can she do? There was no contingency for this. They did not foresee it. It was a blind spot in their awareness. Now all she sees is _herself_ , stretching out infinitely before her, reminiscent of the dream she once credited with beginning her career. She takes her hand from the door suddenly as though she has been burned, and turns, at a loss, struggling to find a destination.

In the end, she finds her way into the sitting room, where she collapses into one of the armchairs, folding her hands tightly in her lap and staring mutely ahead.

It is several long minutes before Booker finds her. She hears him moving through the house after a while, but he seems to be in no hurry, or perhaps simply reluctant to confront her again, for which she could not blame him. When he finally does appear, it is from the library. He steps in slowly, regarding her even as she avoids his gaze, and says nothing.

Without looking directly at him, Rosalind speaks, her tone now numb and perfunctory: “Mr. DeWitt, I apologize for the passionate manner in which I spoke to you just now. It was inappropriate and unkind. This was not your doing.” She draws a shuddering breath. “If it was anyone’s, it was mine. I was the one who rigged the machine, the reason it… malfunctioned.” What a horribly clinical term. She flinches from it.

Booker looks down at his boots. “You didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says.

“Oh?” She looks at him, the motion sharp and birdlike, drawing him to tip his gaze back up to her. She stares at him, eyes wide and bright. “And what on earth has _intent_ to do with anything? Did you _intend_ for the outcomes of all the things you’ve done? Does it make a single difference?” She looks away again, some of the tension going out of her through sheer weariness. She leans back into the chair, letting it swallow her up some more. “Intent is worthless,” she says softly.

Booker has no answer for this. He simply stands there. How she wishes he would get angry, blame her for what she’s done. _Something_ to kill this dreadful silence. She and Robert never had to contend with silence unless it served them.

Rosalind doesn’t lift her gaze from the wall when she says abruptly, “Cigarette.”

Booker hesitates. “I’m sorry?”

“Cigarettes, you have them, yes?” she says impatiently, her eyes finding him again. He manages a nod, and she holds out a hand. “Give me a cigarette, please.”

He stares at her, seeming a bit shocked, which he’s right enough to be. Neither Rosalind nor her brother have ever smoked once. A foul, unattractive habit, miserably bad for one’s health. Well, foul and unhealthy, at least; Robert’s feelings on its attractiveness were in some doubt. At least, he always seemed to mind it less when it was Booker doing the smoking.

Now, for whatever reason, she needs this desperately. Perhaps it will help her calm her nerves. That is how people seem to employ them, after all.

Booker comes forward and takes a cigarette from his case, passing it to her. He replaces his case and takes out his lighter. Rosalind places the cigarette in her mouth, holding a hand out for the lighter, but he ignores this, flicking it on himself and leaning in to light it for her. His seeming chivalry annoys her, but she realizes it is the right impulse; her hands are trembling far too much for her to do it herself.

He steps back, giving her space. She takes a drag on the cigarette, letting the smoke fill her lungs, an altogether unpleasant experience. She coughs, her eyes watering, and briefly regards the little thing with scorn before she resumes smoking. She doesn’t have there wherewithal to care about a bit of discomfort.

Booker is still waiting patiently for her to speak, it seems, so after she’s gotten reasonably used to smoking, she indulges him. “I did _all this_ for him,” she says with a quick gesture meant to signify the entire house. “Everything to do with you, from fixing our mistakes to bringing you here, it was all to make him happy.”

He says nothing. He’s being very good at that, at silence. It grates on her. She smokes.

“All I ever wanted was to be with him,” she murmurs. “From the moment I knew he existed, I knew there was no one else, never _would_ be anyone else who could understand me as he could. If we could just be together, then… That was all. I would have done anything for him. His happiness was all I needed.” Unable to deny the all-too-evident untruth of that, she shrugs wearily. “All I thought I needed.” She smokes some more, her gazed fixed on some abstract point in the middle distance. “And now he’s gone, and it’s my fault.”

“But aren’t there—” says Booker haltingly, “like with me, aren’t there other Roberts in other worlds?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” says Rosalind automatically, then winces. “At least, it _hasn’t_. It has always been that we are everywhere at once—every variant of ourselves existing simultaneously, a multitude of fragments making up a whole. If something were to happen to any of us, another would… well, fill in, I suppose, though it would seem instantaneous. The concept is called quantum immortality. We have been unkillable ever since we purportedly died.”

“So…” Booker shifts his weight. He is holding together remarkably well. She envies him for it. “Why didn’t it work this time?”

“Hm.” Rosalind inhales more smoke and manages not to cough this time. “A good question. The Contraption… _did_ something to us before it struck him. I felt it, and I know he did, too. There wasn’t time to…” She trails off for a long moment, idly studying her free hand, which is still trembling like a leaf. It seems like it might not be attached to her, so distant and out of her control. “At first I thought we might have been made mortal again, but that isn’t it. I am still myself. I have retained all my memories and my… well, my capacity, I suppose. And yet I am no longer whole. I think we were cut off, somehow, from the greater part of ourselves. Duplicated and separated. We became… extraneous. And now the extraneous Robert is no more. Perhaps it was a natural defensive response, to be rid of him—the universe has never liked such oddities existing. I imagine I would have been soon to follow had I not destroyed our work.”

She doesn’t much care whether Booker can follow her on this or not. She knows she is right. When she saw Robert being pulled apart before her eyes, felt herself going through the same torment, she knew they were being split into something new. Like the mythical Hydra, a head removed to sprout two more, and here they are, the beheaded fragment, writhing uselessly in the dirt. In a way, then, Booker is right—there _are_ other versions of herself and Robert, either one or many, depending on how one thinks of it. But that isn’t what he meant when he asked. And it won’t help them.

Whether he follows the explanation or not, Booker has at least latched onto that part of it: “But doesn’t that mean there _are_ more of him?” he insists. “If you were duplicated, then…”

“ _Us_ ,” she corrects in a hiss. “There are more of _us_. We are a _unit_ , Mr. DeWitt. Even if my theory is correct, even if we _were_ capable of stealing him from some other moment in time—which we are not—it would not work. This is not like replacing a _pet_. He is a _different Robert_ , belonging to a different world. It would only serve to deprive another Rosalind of him for myself. She would, of course, find that disagreeable, and she would seek to fix it just as I had, and it would be an endless, recursive, unsolvable problem. I must be the one to suffer this wound, because it has happened to _me_. It must therefore _end_ with me.”

“But we could stop it from happening,” Booker says fumblingly, and only now can she catch a glimpse of desperation in him, a subtle panic at the realization that they may, in fact, be unable to fix this. “Go back, right? Tell yourselves—”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” she says impatiently. His grasping for answers is doing little to ease her into this cold new reality. “That isn’t how it works. This is _fixed_ now. We cannot change what has happened to us. I am no longer what I was—another Rosalind is not me, not truly. Even if we were to attempt such a foolish maneuver and create more and more tangents, it would not change the math. This Robert, _my_ Robert, is gone forever. Equilibrium cannot be restored. There will _always be_ an odd number of _me_.”

The horrible truth of this rings in the air as Booker falls silent once again. Rosalind settles back into her chair with every intention of finishing her cigarette in dismal peace.

Still, Booker presses the issue. “When he tried to explain this to me…” he says slowly, “all this time travel shit, or whatever it is… he told me everything that’s happened or _will_ happen is already happening, all at once. Something like that.”

To Booker’s credit, he manages to hit upon the matter remarkably well. She glances at him in guarded surprise. “That is… correct,” she says hesitantly. “Well remembered.”

“So, some other Robert and Rosalind, they’re going to keep trying. Right?” Booker catches her eyes and holds fast, some of his natural intensity returning to him. “This will keep happening.”

“As I have already explained—”

“I’m not talking about fixing it for us,” says Booker, flat and almost stern. “I’m talking about fixing it for _them_.”

Rosalind freezes in place, the cigarette dangling loosely between her fingers.

Booker seizes onto her silence. “If it keeps happening, and it’s broken, then… make a version where it’s not. Right? Isn’t that what he did with me?”

Her eyes find him. He’s breathing heavily, worked up over his layman’s supposition. He is, infuriatingly, correct. She gives him the subtlest of nods.

“They’ll come here, right? To get the house ready,” says Booker. “So, stop them. Before they find me, before they set any of it in motion.”

How is it that _Booker DeWitt_ , of all people, has hit on a workable course of action? Has she truly fallen so far? Without Robert…

Enough of that thinking. Without Robert she is still _Rosalind Lutece_ , one of the most brilliant minds of her time. She adjusts her position, squaring her shoulders.

“I… I don’t know that it would be that simple,” she says, cautious lest she become optimistic. “I cannot leave at will anymore. They will not come here to _this point_ in time, I would have to…” She goes quiet, thinking hard, smoking the cigarette nearly down to the filter. “It might be possible,” she says softly. “If we were to change it…” She closes her eyes. Hope is the wrong sensation here. It is possible they will be able to halt this regressive loop and reunite this Booker and that Robert, and if that can be done, it should be done. It is what Robert would do, after all—fix the mistake for someone _else_ , regardless of his own circumstances—and it is only right that she try to honor him appropriately. But no matter what happens, _her_ Robert will still be gone. No matter what happens, she is alone. “If we _were_ to change it…” she says again, barely above a whisper. After a very long silence, she looks up at Booker. “It is possible, I think. It will take some time.”

Booker’s mouth twitches. That was nearly a smile, she thinks. “Time, you got,” he says, “seems to me.”

“Indeed.” She looks at the spent cigarette—she smoked that awfully fast, didn’t she?—and without an ashtray available, she puts it out indifferently on the armrest of the chair. “I shall… require your help,” she says.

He nods. “Of course.”

She looks at him briefly, then away. Not because the sight of him disturbs her as it has for so long, but because she feels ashamed to see him handling this so much more competently. He, of course, is different; she has never had to endure anything like this before, and she should not expect herself to react like a man who’s been through heartbreak so many times that it’s like an old friend. But even so. She has been unfair to him, and she knows this. It has never been any great priority of hers to be _kind_ to people—what purpose does it serve? A quandary that forever vexed her brother. Now, with Robert gone, she feels she must undertake his unfinished struggle, the task of teaching her compassion. “Booker…” she says, and takes a few beats to steel herself. “I am sorry.”

His silence is profound and deeply unhelpful. She wishes she had another cigarette.

“He loved you,” she offers, and it feels strange to say, stranger to part with it, as though it were her secret to guard, a piece of Robert she’ll no longer get to keep.

Booker is quiet for a long time, looking at the floor. “I know,” he says.


	6. resolution & finale

“So,” says Rene after a long, long pause. Her hand is still in Rosalind’s, clutching it tighter as the story became more difficult to relate. Rosalind endures the grip. The memories are coming back to her, bit by horrible bit. She almost wishes they wouldn’t.

“So,” Rene repeats, having to shake herself out of her thoughts. “It took time. Now that I could no longer leave at will, we had to resort to other means of obtaining resources. It is a day’s journey to town from here, something Robert and I chose because we thought distance would be no object—and while privacy is the blessing, solitude turned out to be the curse. We made that journey a few times, but only when we had to. It was difficult. When anything crucial needed building or repairing, we started taking other things apart. We wanted to avoid traveling whenever we could, so we just…” she makes a vague gesture with her free hand, “improvised.”

“And you contacted us,” says Rosalind. “I remember it now… you left us a note, in—in the phonograph.”

“It took many attempts,” sighs Rene. “I discovered that I could still send _things_ through time and space, just not myself. Very small things, and only very occasionally, and with limited success. As if I am simply operating at incredibly low power.”

“But we found you,” says Rosalind, looking at her as if recognizing her for the first time. These, she realizes, _are_ her memories; actually _hers_. “In the future. _Our_ future. Why couldn’t we _see_ it?”

“I suspect it is something to do with how I am, and was, no longer a part of your future.” Rene smiles, faint and sad. “The important thing was you found us. And… there followed a very difficult explanation.”

“I remember.”

 

“ _You’re—how is this possible?” she demanded, eyes wide with excitement, reaching out as if desiring to touch her double, to confirm her reality. “You—”_

“ _I am not here to charm you, my dear,” said Rene—before she had rebranded herself, but Rene all the same. “Would that I were. I’m sure we’d have a great deal to explore. I am here to save you from yourself.”_

 

“You were very dramatic,” Rosalind remarks.

“I was tired and desperate.”

“It was thrilling. Before I…” Rosalind sighs heavily. “Before I understood the whys and wherefores.”

“Yes, you were utterly delighted to see me. I would have enjoyed meeting you, under different circumstances.” Rene chuckles rather dryly. “Of course, I now I have met you again, but the circumstances are much the same. This is twice now I’ve told you this story. Honestly, I feel rather cheated.”

Rosalind doesn’t respond to that, though she is inclined to agree. It _was_ thrilling; utterly, wonderfully exhilarating to meet a _third_ Lutece, and she had wanted so much to simply whisk her away with them before she knew how impossible that was. Her instinct now is the same as Rene’s: to take this conversation elsewhere, somewhere lighter and more exciting. But they must see this through to its bitter conclusion.

She remembers receiving in blunt and unsugared fashion the explanation for Rene’s existence, her Robert’s absence, and the way Booker behaved upon seeing this new Robert. Robert, for his part, had not quite known what to do with himself, and had remained quiet for much of the encounter, staring at Booker.

“The idea for mortality was yours,” says Rene. “Once you understood how far you were each willing to go—how badly Robert wanted and needed this, that this orphaned iteration of DeWitt was now a part of that, and that you were doomed to rend the whole thing apart—you knew. You knew there was only one way to solve it, and that was to neutralize yourself as a threat. To make yourself the very thing you had avoided for so long. To give yourself life again.”

 

“ _You’re sure?” Robert said warily. “You’ve never wanted this.”_

“ _I do not see another way forward, do you?”_

“ _But what will you do?”_

“ _I shall find the means to be content. I am resourceful.”_

“ _You won’t remember this,” he pointed out. “You’ll be unhappy. You’ll want to escape.”_

“ _That’s what we’re counting on,” said Rene._

 

“We couldn’t take you with us,” Rosalind says; even as the memories come back, she finds it helpful to speak them aloud. Her other hand finds its way to their entwined fingers, stroking absently along the line of Rene’s thumb.

“No.” Rene smiles down at their hands, but makes no comment on it. “You wanted to. But we knew that once you made yourselves mortal, you would become part of a moment that does not exist in this world. You would keep the house, of course—the house exists in many variations. Booker and I only exist here.”

“And as soon as we gave up omnipresence, we would forget you.”

“Which we why we built the telegraph machines.” Rene nods. “Which worked rather well, in the end, all credit to us. There was an issue with temporal dilation—sometimes a great lag between messages, I think. It was finicky. A kink for you to work out.” She shrugs this off. “We had a very precise method. The first message you received, _Alive or Dead_ , was actually a code we created together. If you by some chance remembered us, you would have answered _Home_ , and we’d have been able to communicate freely, and coordinate bringing Booker to you. But we knew that was a long shot. Recovering memories that were attached to me would always be… problematic.” Her smile grows sad again, her eyes distant. “Our only choice was to make it difficult for you. When you chose a place in time to instantiate yourselves in this house, you intentionally chose a time after the destruction of the Contraption. If you had been able to leave immediately, you would have done so, and we would not have been able to coordinate. The only way was for you and I to repair our respective machines alongside each other, in parallel worlds.”

“While Booker operated the telegraph,” Rosalind murmurs.

“I frequently told him what to say,” says Rene. “Things that would unsettle you but draw Robert in. I knew you’d be wary of it, just as he could not resist the intrigue. Then you would spend all your time working on the Contraption while I did the same. While Booker gave Robert things to do. We kept you both busy, active. Happy, in his case.”

“The clock.”

“There was a reason we removed all the clocks from that place.” Rene leans over, nestling closer against her counterpart and resting her head on Rosalind’s shoulder. “It was a built-in challenge, to build a clock with no frame of reference. Robert’s idea, in fact; he quite enjoyed the notion, and trusted it would reoccur to him. So Booker established himself as a convenient benefactor who would pay Robert for his work, thus making your life sustainable. It’s worth mentioning that Robert didn’t entirely trust him—Booker had to be very careful to avoid setting him off. But he did agree to keep it from you. Likely because he knew you would hate the idea.”

“He was right,” mutters Rosalind, “though I hated more the fact that he kept it from me at all.”

“Of course you did. And in the end, you went behind his back, got the information you needed, and came through in his stead. Booker had wanted to see _him_ , of course, but I knew it would be better like this. To send Booker off, into his new home; let you have a bit of peace. That’s why I didn’t dissuade Booker from that abominably simple password.”

“I see.” Rosalind purses her lips, considering all of this. “I seem to have played myself rather well.”

“Is that how you see it?” Rene lifts her head back up to get a better look at her. “We all agreed it was necessary. A complicated scheme to be sure, but it had to be precisely engineered to achieve the desired results. There could be no chances taken; we had only the one shot at it.” She gives Rosalind’s hand a gentle squeeze. “And it worked. You wanted Robert to be happy, and you have done it. Congratulations are in order.” Her smile is a bit strained; it is impossible not to notice. “All that remains now is to see whether or not you _are_ in fact capable of discovering contentment in that place.”

Rosalind considers this for a time, eyeing Rene thoughtfully. “Are _you_ to be our benefactor, then?” she says. “Or was that merely a blind?”

“Now that the Contraptions are in working order, I may be of a bit more use,” says Rene. “It would take some coordination, but I have nothing but time. I want to be sure you can all sustain, even if—”

“Because we have no need of one,” Rosalind interrupts. “We are perfectly capable of making our own way. If that is all you can cook up to keep yourself a part of these machinations, then you are more sorely lacking in imagination than I would have thought.”

Rene looks quite taken aback, not sure if she ought to be offended. Rosalind doesn’t give her time to decide:

“Did you really think that once I remembered, I wouldn’t feel exactly as I did before? That I would not _demand_ you return with me?” She turns in toward Rene, clutching both her hands now. “Come with me. Live with _us_ , and leave this miserable, desiccated corpse of a house to rot. That is the only course of action I will accept.”

Rene softens at once, but she is far from leaping at the idea, instead looking tired and distant. “Oh, my dear,” she says wearily. “I don’t belong there.”

“And why not?” Rosalind sits forward, energized by the idea. “You are a free agent. There is nothing at all to keep you occupied here. Do you intend to be our glorified secretary for the rest of our days? Or is it a form of self-flagellation for your perceived wrongdoing—to sequester yourself away here like a mad widow. Is that your notion?” When Rene doesn’t respond right away, Rosalind huffs, “Been taking notes from the men in our life, I see.”

“And what would you all do with me?” Rene meets her eyes, frowning in firm disapproval. “A second fiddle to you with no claim to that place, apart from having made it _necessary_ , of course—I suppose I could take up knitting, station myself as a perpetual house guest. That is how well I’ll slot into your lives.”

“I didn’t think we had a penchant for martyrdom,” says Rosalind with eyes narrowed. “Do you really think you’ll be treated as anything other than what you are?”

“And what am I, then?” Rene pulls her hands away, spreading them to indicate her unkempt self. “I am superfluous. You would take pity on me, take me in like an abandoned dog. Your Robert is still not my Robert. We cannot very well _share_ him. There is no balance to restore; all I would do is add imbalance, which is precisely what I’ve been trying to avoid.”

“On the contrary: it’s simple arithmetic, you goose,” Rosalind chides. Resorting to affectionate name-calling seems to be a natural inclination, which isn’t a surprise. Rene is like a person she’s known her whole life, and yet is only meeting for the first (well, second) time. Fondness and frustration come in equal measure. “Why be three when we could be four? Do you think I mean to offer you recompense for the loss of your brother? It’s true that there will be two of us to one of him; I am sure that will require some adjustment. But he has Mr. DeWitt, who offers him something else altogether. And what of me? Would you leave me deprived? Doomed to be a third wheel? While he has his company, I would have nothing and no one—and _that_ sounds like imbalance to me.”

“What _are_ you implying,” Rene says, not really intoning a question.

“Don’t be coy,” says Rosalind, smiling faintly. “It’s terribly unconvincing.”

Where Robert is given to passion and romance, takes the time to pine and woo and nurture his feelings, Rosalind has only ever seen opportunity. She has never been opposed to the concept of romance, she supposes; but it is _experience_ , not daydreams, that keeps her engaged. Rene is the same; of course she is! _If you’re good_ , she’d said. Smiling and teasing. All this playful, seemingly innocuous contact—for comfort, for curiosity. She’d had a terrible story to relate, and that had of course taken priority. But they are on the same page, have been since they laid eyes on each other, and they both know it.

Rene tilts her head, considering her counterpart. “Do you remember when Robert told us we were a textbook narcissist?” she says offhandedly.

“Well, he certainly wasn’t wrong,” says Rosalind. “ _Textbook_ was a bit uncalled for.”

“We’d never hear the end of this,” she says.

“Has that ever stopped us before?”

“Rosalind…” Rene sighs and presses her thumb to her brow, massaging the apparent beginning of a headache. “You cannot simply seduce me into abandoning my principle on this matter.”

“Which principle? The one that dictates you ought to be miserable for the rest of your days?” Rosalind leans forward and grips Rene by the shoulders, holding her tightly, holding her close. Rene flushes at the sudden proximity; a lovely sight, if Rosalind is being honest with herself. “I am trying to _seduce_ you for scientific and personal enjoyment,” she says, her voice growing softer and lower, “and because you were not nearly so light with the gin as I requested. If that were all I wished, a tantalizingly unnatural dalliance with my own mirrored self, I could very well get it and leave you to your brooding. I want you to come _back_ with me because…” She averts her eyes, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Rene, for her part, seems to have fallen speechless. Affection and emotional honesty have never been their strong suit, and though this is not disingenuous, it is certainly surprising.

“Rene, if that is who you are to be,” says Rosalind, pulling herself together enough to look back in her eyes. “You remember, of course, when we first became aware of Robert’s existence.”

Rene gazes back at her, her expression softening by degrees. “We’d have done anything to be with him,” she says quietly. “We _did_.”

“He was _us_. Finally, our intellectual equal—our equal in every way.”

“And we swore we would never lose him.”

“Well, now, I have met _you_.” Rosalind feels a twinge of nervousness, her heart pounding a little faster than it ought to be. “Why should it be any different? Why should I want to lose _you_? And for that matter, why should Robert?”

Rene is guarded, but Rosalind can read her well enough: she is moved, in some small way, by this pronouncement; she desires the contact described. And still she hesitates.

“I will always be an oddity in that house,” says Rene.

“Well, I should rather hope so,” says Rosalind. “It wouldn’t do if we were exactly the same, would it? If we had nothing to offer one another?”

“We would have to do something about this place. The Contraption, all our work—we can’t leave it to be discovered.”

“We have proven ourselves to be very good at destroying our work.”

“You’re mad.”

“We shall work something _out_ , Rene.” Rosalind resists the urge to shake her for emphasis. “You will _not_ be cowed by mere _logistics_.”

Rene sighs, this time rather aggrieved. “I should have known this would happen,” she says.

“You’re right. You should have.” Satisfied at last, Rosalind finally releases her and takes a moment to study her rather imperiously before reaching out to touch her cheek, a thoughtful gesture, as though trying it out. “After all you’ve been through, it would be foolish to accept anything less. We don’t need you in this house. I need you _there_. You are a part of us, Rene, of me. Do not do us the disservice of wasting away.”

Rene looks back at her, her eyes flicking back and forth as she digests all this. She keeps her expression relatively neutral, but she quite noticeably does not pull away from Rosalind’s touch. “Mortality has made you kinder,” she says eventually.

“I don’t think so,” says Rosalind. “Robert has. Mortality just makes me tired, and hungry, and a thousand other insults. It makes me _want_. Want is such a bother. If Robert hadn’t clung to it so, we might have avoided all this.” Her eyes drift down to Rene’s lips—her own lips, really—rather appreciatively. “But I suppose there is some merit to wanting. New experiences to be had.”

“ _New experiences_? How utterly utilitarian. As if you haven’t daydreamed of this exact scenario for as long as I have.” Rene reaches up and cups her hand around the back of Rosalind’s neck, fingers playing lightly at the edges of her tightly styled hair. “You _are_ a narcissist, Rosalind.”

“I did not deny it.”

Finally, a little fire coming back into her, Rene breaks into a grin. She leans in close, near enough to murmur in Rosalind’s ear: “I suppose you want to throw me down and find out what, exactly, you taste like, and just how loud you can be.”

Rosalind is surprised, pleasantly so, to feel a shiver running down her spine. “Very astute,” she says, a bit breathless.

“Of course it is. Because that is exactly what _I_ want to do to _you_.”

“Ah.” Of course, there is that complication. They are equally fond of taking charge of a situation; equally fond of _administering_ , to put it rather clinically. “Bit of a quandary, I suppose.”

“I have just the thing for it.” Rene pulls away abruptly, getting up from the sofa and leaving Rosalind feeling rather bereft. She goes rummaging around in the drawer of the nearest end table; finding what she wants, she pulls back and holds it up for Rosalind to see: a single Columbian silver eagle.

“I might have known,” Rosalind says dryly.

“What else would it have been? Rock paper scissors?” Rene’s smile becomes a bit wicked. “Go on then; the honor is yours, you being the guest. Heads or tails?”

Rosalind isn’t sure she trusts that smile, though there’s no reason to assume trickery. They are not repeating time; probability is functioning normally. She considers for a while, and then proclaims, “Tails. It was always our choice, after all—and really, how many times _can_ a coin come down heads?”

Rene gives her a conceding sort of nod, and then flips the coin, catching it and slapping it deftly onto the back of her other hand. She hovers there for a moment of rather theatrical suspense, then lifts her hand and looks. She grins. She holds it up to show.

Rosalind leans forward to peer at it, and sighs. “Well,” she says. “That’s rather disappoin—”

The coin strikes the floor as Rene sweeps forward, practically lunging back onto the sofa and knocking Rosalind flat on her back and kissing her with a passion Rosalind didn’t entirely know they _had_. She fumbles for a moment, her hands struggling to find purchase—Rene’s hands are all over her, gripping her shoulders, her waist, her hips, cupping around the back of her neck, her cheeks, her jaw. When Rosalind tries to reach back, Rene seizes her wrists and pins them down, smirking against her mouth.

All this activity is not terribly surprising. They are quite tactile, always wanting to get their hands all over something, or someone, as the case may be. But they have never cared for receiving this treatment, being manhandled—so to speak—by the various women they’ve been with. And yet now, in her own hands, Rosalind finds it… not at all disagreeable. She allows herself to relax, following Rene’s rather avid lead, allowing herself to be held down; allowing herself to enjoy it.

Rene’s tongue darts between her lips and she parts them obligingly, letting the kiss deepen, noting her pleasure with a soft sound in the back of her throat. Rene slides her hands back down to Rosalind’s waist, gripping her tightly before dragging her fingers slowly back up, one hand finding Rosalind’s jaw and the other, her breast. Rosalind squirms beneath her, wishing she were not caught under so many layers of clothing—she wants to get her knee between Rene’s thighs, wants to grind against her until she cries out, perhaps to win back the upper hand. But even just this, Rene’s skillful fingers touching light where she wants it light and hard where she wants it hard—every touch is electric, and it is marvelous, perfect; Rosalind has never been given to such grandiose terms, shying away always from poetry or hyperbole, but _this_ , her own hands knowing exactly where and how to touch, the kiss as luxuriant and well-balanced as any she’s ever received, it… well, it’s worth note.

When Rene finally pulls back, she looks flushed and beautiful, smiling brighter than Rosalind has seen, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She surveys Rosalind with the same attitude they might render over some project they’re particularly proud of, and Rosalind feels a tug of desire in her gut.

“So quiet?” Rene teases her. “That must be a first.”

“Would you prefer I rate your performance?” Rosalind raises a hand rather lazily to Rene’s face, stroking her cheek, smudging a bit of grime—she is dirty, but Rosalind finds she doesn’t care one bit.

“Mm?” Rene watches Rosalind’s hand before catching it and pressing her lips to her two extended fingers. “And what would you say, if you did?”

Rosalind shifts a little beneath her, wishing more than ever to be rid of this blasted skirt. “That it was easily—” She cuts herself off with a noiseless gasp as Rene takes her fingers in her mouth, sucking them slowly, her tongue flitting teasingly between them. “— _Ah_ —entirely, _singularly_ , the best kiss I have ever had.”

Rene withdraws just long enough to correct her: “ _We_ have ever had,” before she goes right back to sucking hungrily on her fingers. Rosalind did not even realize this could feel so terribly _good_. Her own arousal is becoming difficult to ignore; keeping still, maintaining a modicum of decorum, is an increasingly difficult goal.

“You are…” Rosalind’s breath hitches when Rene releases her fingers and lowers herself back down to mouth instead at Rosalind’s neck, kissing an eager line up to the edge of her jaw. Rosalind clears her throat. “You are simply perfect. You feel so _terribly_ good, and you—I’m never letting you out of my sight, never again. I’m sorry, are you about to—?”

Rene doesn’t let her finish, but she _does_ answer the question, biting down and sucking at her neck, hard enough to leave a bruise. Rosalind gasps sharply, a half-uttered cry that quickly becomes a full-throated moan, her hands going to grip at Rene’s back, fingers digging in, rutting helplessly against her. The impropriety of this is _incredible_ , and that is precisely why Rene is doing it: because it feels dangerous, it feels like something neither of them would allow from anyone else.

Just as the delicate intersection of pleasure and pain begins to feel too intense, Rene stops, knowing exactly _when_ to stop. She hovers over Rosalind’s neck, feeling her chest heave with frantic breath, admiring her handiwork.

“There; it’s official,” she says, and leans in to breathe against Rosalind’s ear. “You’re mine for today.”

Rosalind is startled, almost indignant, at how much this turns her on. She squirms beneath her, flushed and overheated, desperate for _more_. “How perfectly insolent,” she breathes. “This will not go unpunished.”

“I don’t doubt it. But for now, my dear, I’m afraid you’re at the mercy of the coin toss.” Rene gives her another quick kiss, too fast to become anything distracting, and then slides back, dragging her hands slowly down Rosalind’s body—her shoulders, her breasts, her waist and her hips, down to her thighs. Studying her.

“Are you certain you don’t want to rip off my clothes,” says Rosalind, not sure if she’s teasing or suggesting.

“Not so certain,” says Rene lightly, “but that wouldn’t do at all. We have other places to be today.”

Rosalind sighs, but she can’t complain much when Rene is busying herself with divesting her—partially, at least, pushing up her skirts, sliding down her underthings, all very disordered and sloppy, which Rosalind finds she rather likes. So much about her has been tidy and efficient; a bit of mess is just what she needs. Rene ducks down into the folds of her skirts, nestling between her legs, and Rosalind only wishes she could still _see_ her.

She opens her legs a little wider, her breath coming in short and shallow. She can feel Rene coming close, taking her time, taking her in. She tries to imagine it: the scent, the heat, the taste, the sounds she’ll make—the sounds _Rene_ would make. She wishes at the very least she could dig her fingers into Rene’s hair and hold her in place, but the shroud of her own skirt makes that rather impractical, so she just grips the sofa as best she can, her whole body quivering with anticipation.

Their fingers are soft, given to detail work; the fingers of a lifelong academic. Rosalind feels them touch her delicately, parting her, tracing over her, feeling how wet she is, the contact too light to elicit much more than subtle twitches and the occasional longing whimper. Making her wait. Rosalind isn’t sure what Rene is waiting _for_ , except just to torment her, which might be reason enough. It’s not until she leans her head back, her eyes fluttering shut, and whispers, “ _Please_ ,” that she realizes—it was for that.

Rene moves closer at once and suddenly, mercifully, there is _contact_ , her mouth and nose pressed in against Rosalind’s cunt, her tongue flicking out playfully as she mouths and rubs against her. Rosalind’s back arches, her hands itching for something to grasp, and she rolls her hips forward desperately. Rene seems to enjoy this, making an encouraging little moan against her, and Rosalind obliges, grinding slowly against her face. Rene takes her perfectly well—they are both seasoned at this, after all—licking long, warm strokes, darting playfully over her clit until Rosalind is gasping with every breath, sucking in air as if she’s breaching the surface of water after drowning. She wraps her legs around Rene as best she can, holding her in, and Rene responds by sucking at her, patient and achingly gentle. Rosalind so longs to _see_ her, to watch as she teases her so carefully, knowledgeably, _tenderly_ to the brink. This is so _much_ , so overwhelming, Rosalind could lose herself in it, just the buzzing in her fingers and the burn of adrenaline under her skin and the tense curl of her toes inside her boots—there is so much she wants to pull apart and analyze as well as to experience, and she wants this moment to last forever, instead of being what it must be, an explosion of sensation crashing down around her.

“ _Oh_ —” She moans in earnest, unable to keep herself contained any longer. “Oh—Rene, I’m—I—” Words are too difficult to form, and she gives way to another long moan, a passionate crescendo, a little more shrill than she expected, but one can’t be particular about such things. A full-bodied shudder rips through her, aftershocks rolling over her again and again, leaving her wrecked and trembling as Rene brings her gently, lovingly back down.

She is still buzzing with energy when Rene emerges from under her skirts, smoothing them back down some, smiling at her. Rosalind gazes back, feeling loose and limp and _wonderful_.

“When have you ever smiled like that?” Rene wonders, sounding amazed.

“I…” Rosalind hadn’t even realized she was, but she feels it now, the unfamiliar pull of less-used facial muscles. It feels strange. It feels good. She feels _happy_. “I don’t know.”

“It’s beautiful.” Rene reaches out to touch her cheek and Rosalind catches her hand, kissing her palm with what she’s certain is greater affection than she’s ever shown anyone.

“I, I want to—” She swallows with some effort. “I want to do that for you. I want to do _so much_ for you.”

“You shall. Soon. Not just yet, I… I must admit, I’m quite ready to leave this place.” Rene looks different, and it’s not just the smile, or the disarray that initially marked her as different. She looks awake, her eyes wider than before, as though tiredness has been washed away. They are _both_ happy, both experiencing this unique sensation together, _because_ of each other. Rosalind feels like some sort of giddy schoolgirl; it ought to be embarrassing, but she has no time for embarrassment. She laces her fingers through Rene’s.

“Good,” she says.

They spend a few moments just gazing at each other, until finally Rosalind settles back down into herself. She takes her hand back and sits up gingerly, checking over her clothes and her hair. A bit of disarray, but there is no hiding this from Robert either way, and he shall simply have to accept the matter. He shall grow used to it, just as Rene grew used to his affairs with Booker—Rosalind knows they will be doing this again. It will require a great deal of experimentation. She clears her throat. “I shall want to continue exploring the matter of the coin toss,” she says. “Surely it won’t come down heads every time.”

“Indeed not.” Rene stands shakily; she has not been given any sort of release for her continued arousal, which shall have to be dealt with promptly. “I believe such consistency was only a matter of course when repeating a moment again and again.”

“Agreed,” says Rosalind. She stands up as well, adjusting her skirt as best she can. “And yet, wasn’t it strange—how some things were never so certain.”

“Mm.” Rene nods, knowing exactly what she’s getting at. “A coin toss, a lottery ball, always the same, every time. But then sometimes the bird—”

“—and sometimes the cage.” Rosalind laughs softly at the reminder of that oddity… and then goes quiet. It was always a little odd, that game they played with those brooches. In many ways, the bird suited her better, just as the cage has come to suit Robert; and yet it was always she who offered Elizabeth the cage. Now, the cage is offered to _her_ , and it is she who devised it. She who has chosen it, and will choose it again.

Rene has followed her on this thought process, her expression turning muted and thoughtful. “At least it is not a lonely cage,” she says after a moment. “And we can fly from it, when we wish.”

“There is that.” Having fixed the Contraption, they are not so penned in as they were. “Though a cage with an open door is still a cage.”

“Just as a bird inside a cage is still a bird.” Rene reaches out to her, takes her hand. “I don’t see why it has to be one or the other. The bird _or_ the cage—why not _and?”_

Rosalind looks back at Rene, studying her. What she says is true: it won’t be lonely, and they will be free to leave it, now and again, when there is cause. But that is almost a secondary point. She wants to believe what she told Robert before they embarked upon this—that she will come to find contentment in their new home. And will Rene find it as well? Can it become a place they both cherish, a place they both desire to return to, no matter what? Will it be enough, living there with each other, with Robert, that they can be as happy as he?

She doesn’t know the answers. But there is something exciting in that, isn’t there? It’s something old, something beloved, something she hasn’t felt in a long time: uncertainty, with the promise of discovery. The will not just to know, but to _learn_.

///

Imagine, if you will, for old time’s sake, that time then progressed as it was meant to, and that the Luteces progressed with it. Learning, discovering, growing—experiencing happiness as well as sorrow, pleasure as well as pain, fears and doubts and comforts and, occasionally, certainty. This is one possible iteration. This is the iteration we will choose to accept.

In this iteration, a few months down the line, there might be a conversation, and it might proceed like this:

 

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” says Robert, frowning starkly at his clock.

“You certainly did not,” objects Rosalind.

“I _did_ ,” he insists.

“I’ve no memory of this. Ask Rene.”

“She’ll tell me exactly what _you’re_ telling me; she always does.” Robert frowns, looking almost petulant. “You always conspire against me.”

“Certainly do _not!”_ Rosalind objects, though she laughs at the thought of it.

“In any case it _didn’t_ work.” Robert bends down to inspect his stubborn creation, which so far has refused every attempt to make it actually tell the time. “I’m beginning to fear we shall have to take it all apart and start over. _Again_.”

“There’s no need for that. There is something we’re missing; we’ll discover it yet.”

“I don’t know how I feel about you playing the _optimist_ ,” says Robert. He steps back from the worktable and stretches, his back cracking. “I need a break. Bloody stupid of us, putting the entire laboratory in the cellar. I’m going to go blind down here.”

“The house is small enough; would you really like to trade in our limited shelf space for so that you could enjoy daylight while you work?” Rosalind wipes her hands on her skirt and walks to the stairs, leading them up to the kitchen. “As if you aren’t easily distracted enough as it is—the only reason we even managed to get so far today is Booker’s absurd sleep schedule. He’s becoming nocturnal. Not that I _object_ to his absence in the workshop—”

“Please, don’t remind me,” Robert groans as he goes to put the kettle on. “Up with you all day, then he expects to see me at night. We need to get this clock in order just so I can enforce a damn schedule.”

“I’m sure that will go over very well.”

“Your encouragement is always appreciated, dear sister.” Robert lights the stove and steps back. “Perhaps the English Breakfast today. I’m feeling rather homesick.”

“Are you indeed.” Rosalind smiles to herself as she gets the tea out from the cupboard. They lapse into silence for a moment while she sets things up. Once this is done, she turns to her brother. His back is to her, having taken a few things from the icebox, now in the process of constructing a sandwich. She watches him idly, then steps in beside him. She rests a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ve done all right for ourselves,” she says, “haven’t we.”

“I should certainly hope so, with all the trouble it took.”

“And you said I was a fatalist.” She leans on him a moment. “You’re in a mood.”

“I _did_ tell you it wouldn’t work,” he says. “But I very much hoped I was wrong.”

“Mm.” She gives him an affirming pat and steps away. “Chin up; there’s always next time.”

He laughs to himself. It’s a good sound. She hears it more and more often these days. “I suppose there is,” he says.


End file.
